A Slippery Slope, A Green Horizon
by Solomon95
Summary: BBRae fic, kinda NSFW, this is going to be an ongoing story tracing the key moments in the romance of Raven and Beast Boy. Light RobStar, maybe some Cyborg centric stuff later on. DC owns all the rights, characters, settings, etc. DC if you're reading this, I am but a lowly fanfic writer with nothing in terms of material wealth, you would gain nothing from a lawsuit with me.
1. Chapter 1

Pre-dawn light washed over Titans Tower, its warm glow creeping slowly down the massive buildings side.

In her room, Raven smiled to herself. Just a little.

Reaching out with her empathy, four distinct sets of emotions bloomed into being around her, all of them sluggish and unrefined in the depths of sleep.

As was always the case, she was the first to rise in the tower. Changing slowly into her leotard, cloak, belt and boots, Raven left her room. Gliding silently down the halls, passing through walls and floors in a swirl of dark energy, she made her way to the common room, where her teapot made its home.

Setting about her morning ritual of tea drinking, contemplation and early reading, Raven awaited the return of her friends from the iron grasp of unconsciousness.

Robin was awake soon after her tea was done boiling, no matter how long of a day the boy wonder had, he never failed to rise with the sun. Raven felt his emotions sharpen into the focused confidence that was ever present within their team leader. Entering the room and nodding politely towards Raven, he sat down with a recent issue of the Gotham Times and the two settled into a comfortable silence. Like Raven, Robin understood the peace of an early morning, the serenity found in quiet moments and contentment with ones knowledge that they were there before all others, to watch the world start anew with the receding shadows of night and the soft warmth of the returning sun.

He and Raven spent most mornings like this, simply appreciating the others company and revelling in the precious stretch of peace between dawn and the arrival of their friends (Who the both of them regarded as family, in their own ways)

Within her room, Starfire's emotions suddenly burst into life, her happiness and excitement rushed through Raven in a pleasant way. The empath tapped the table softly and Robin nodded, acknowledging that their peace was about to be broken.

Though neither was particularly unhappy to see it go.

"Good morning, Friend Raven and Friend Robin!" Starfire greeted them joyful, soaring above them in a jubilant circle. "Isn't today simply most wondrous indeed!"

"Morning Star. Get a good nights sleep?" Robin returned with an indulgent smile, setting his newspaper down gently.

"Most assuredly Friend Robin! I slept like a hog!" Starfire enthused, her hands clasped happily as she took her place at the table, noticeably closer to Robin than anyone else.

Robin raised an eyebrow at the excitable princess. "Uh… I think you mean "like a log" Starfire."

The young Tameranian frowned slightly. "But logs do not sleep Friend Robin, so how would one copy their sleeping habits?"

Before the bemused young man could respond, Cyborg's emotions coalesced into a ball of enthusiasm and amusement, his sudden shift into wakefulness was, as always, accompanied by a thundering "BOO YAH!" saving Robin from a confusing lesson in metaphors.  
Cyborg marched into the common room and let out a warm "Mornin' y'all!" before setting about the kitchen with a vengeance. Today was grocery day and Cyborg was determined to use up all of the ingredients left from the previous week.

"I'm making eggs, bacon, pancakes, waffles and fruit salad, so you'll all need to put on some game faces, cause this mornin' is going to be _intense._ " He proclaimed, attending to the necessary preparations with gusto.

As the scents and sounds of Cyborgs cooking began to permeate the Tower, one last set of emotions finally began to solidify. Raven gripped the edges of her book a little tighter as she anticipated the next moments with a mixture of fascination and uncertainty.

Deep within the bowls of his room, Beast Boy's emotions pulled themselves together reluctantly as he woke in a haze. First confusion seeped from his mind as the transition between sleep and wakefulness took hold of the shape shifter. Second came realisation, as his eyes cleared and his room came into focus. Third, and this is what Raven had been waiting for, came a sudden and powerful _something_ that Raven couldn't pin down. It was love and rage and a fierce protectiveness, all combined in a way that Raven couldn't even begin to understand. The strength of this raw, primal emotion took the sorceresses' breath away.

But _what_ was it?

No human had ever given it off before around Raven, nothing remotely close to it. Not Cyborgs feelings as he took the wheel of the T-car, with all of the Titans within it. Not Starfire's jumble of nerves, joy and delight whenever Robin's hand brushed hers. Not even the Boy Wonder's ferocious pride and exhilaration whenever he shouted the famous Titans battle cry.

It was unique and unexplainable. Raven had noticed it shortly after the green teen had saved her from Adonis, when she had started to pay attention to the changeling in earnest. Mostly his emotions were ordinary, if a little on the cheery side. He kept a stable mixture of amusement and happiness bubbling away within him all the time, it was a soothing aura, something that Raven found herself drawn to inexplicably, like a moth to a flame.

Then, there were the rare moments his true self shone through.

Flashes of terror, rage and absolute, unwavering _loyalty_ during particularly hard battles. Overwhelming joy, oneness and a sense of accomplishment during the moment all of the Titans sit to watch a movie. Almost dangerous levels of panic, fear and anxiety at the sight of a team mates blood.

Soaring joy and undiluted pride, whenever he made her smile or laugh.

Raven pulled herself from that particular line of thought with a stern frown, her stomach filled with butterflies that she most certainly disapproved of. She wasn't allowed to entertain such feelings of her own. Feelings were dangerous.

 _She_ was dangerous.

And even if Beast Boy was looking a little taller and a little… _firmer_ , of late, she couldn't let herself think too long on it. There was no telling what her powers might do if she let herself run away with thoughts of how strong his hands were, or how cute it was when his ears twitched, or the deep green color of his eyes…

" _Damn it._ " She growled quietly to herself.

Beast Boy trudged into the common room and levelled an imperious finger at his cybernetic friend.

"MURDERER!" He shouted as Cyborg flipped over the bacon he was frying.

"Hell, if this little piggy wasn't so tasty, I might feel guilty about munchin' on him. Guess we'll never know though, cause he tastes mighty _fine_!" Cyborg sighed, salting the eggs he had cooking on the other pan.

As the two launched into their daily argument on the merits and demerits of vegetarianism, Beast Boy grabbed a bowl of fruit salad and sat in his place beside Raven, who stiffened slightly.

"Excuse me. It's time for my morning meditation." She said flatly as she stood, though Beast Boy caught the slight blush colouring her cheeks.

"Sure Rae, I'll save you some waffles." He chirped in return, winking at her conspiratorially.

Raven's blush deepened beneath her hood as she teleported quickly from the room, several lights and an unlucky egg timer breaking with her escape.

Even in her own room however, the changeling's emotions reached her, his confusion and soft foreboding telling Raven that he had linked her departure with his actions and decided he had done something wrong.

Too bad for the light fixtures that he had done something right.

So _very_ right.

Back in the common room, Beast Boy was frowning accusingly at Raven's recently vacated chair with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

The emerald young man knew he had done something to make the sorceress uncomfortable, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out _what_.

"Don't worry Beast Boy, I'm sure Friend Raven will forgive you." Starfire reassured him with a knowing smile that made the shapeshifter uneasy for some reason.

"Yeah, but the real question is whether she'll forgive him before or _after_ she's killed and buried him." Cyborg sniggered, dumping the steaming piles of food in front of his friends, making a point of setting tofu eggs and soy milk on the table for Beast Boy.

Having recently heard the green teens childhood stories of scrounging for food in alleyways and performing tricks for scraps, he always made sure there was something even a vegan could find to eat among the meals he served. Beast Boy was family, and no one in Cyborgs house would ever go hungry under his watch.

No one.

"Ha ha. I'm sure my impending demise at the hands of a certain azure haired girl is just _hilarious_ to you." Beast Boy retaliated, taking two plates and heaping one with waffles, while the other was heaped with tofu eggs and pancakes.

"Wow, since when do you know words like "Impending" and "Azure"? Last I checked, you had trouble with basic english, let alone stuff like "Demise"." Cyborg marvelled, pretending not to notice as Beast Boy set the waffle filled plate to the side.

"With villains shouting lines about how their "Nefarious plots for the attainment of all accumulated industrial strength acidic compounds will serve to educate the asinine vigilantes that pursue them on the true definition of pain" it's kinda hard not to pick up a phrase or two. Plus I didn't want people thinking I'm dumb just because I don't use big words." He admitted with a shrug, flashing his toothy grin before wolfing down his meal, sometimes as an _actual_ wolf.

Finishing his meal with an impressive belch, Beast Boy collected the plate he had set aside and walked to the elevators, tapping the up button firmly.

"Uh, Beast Boy? Yours and Ravens floor is down." Robin said, tilting his head in a silent question.

"Yeah, but Raven is on the roof dude." Replied the pointy eared youth as he stepped into the recently arrived elevator.

"How do you know?" The boy wonder inquired.

Beast Boy just smiled as the elevator doors closed.

Above him, the changeling's acute animal senses could hear Raven's gravely voice as she chanted her mantra.

Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos.

Raven hovered four feet off the ground, the edge of her cloak only just brushing the roof below her, serenity emanated from her very being. Within the peace of her cleared mind and untroubled emotions, she was free of guilt, of the worlds troubles and the stress of daily life.

Free of unsolicited kindness from a certain green _someone._

A gentle tug on her cloak broke her concentration, her surroundings fading back into view and her senses reaffirming themselves. Beside her stood Beast Boy, a concerned frown on his normally light hearted face.

"If you don't eat something soon you'll be starving Rae, not to mention your waffles will go cold." He said uncomfortably, anticipating grievous bodily harm in the next few moments.

Raven sighed, feeling his tension.

"Thanks, Garfield."


	2. Chapter 2

It was late at night and the others had trickled off to their own respective rooms.

Raven sat in her usual place on the couch, enveloped in her book, shutting out all else but the steady pulse of Beast Boys fascination and wonder, as he too sat, and watched the nature channel's weekend special on the monkeys of Africa.

It was calm, the two engrossed in their own worlds, but enjoying the little pieces of each other that made it through the thoughts and fixation into that place at the back of the mind reserved for warmth, comfort and the presence of your favorite people. Beast Boy chuckled at the antics of a baby monkey and Raven raised an eyebrow at the boldness of her novel's heroine. All was right within their worlds.

Until it wasn't.

Raven gasped as she was lanced with a sadness, cold and sharp, and painful enough to break her heart. Her eyes flew from the book to Beast Boy, his own eyes were wide, tears streaming from their emerald depths, transfixed on the screen as a recording of a young couple feeding chimps was played, their faces happy and fulfilled as their child, a boy with a frock of red hair, giggled at the primates.

"The Logans were renowned the world over for their conservation efforts, shown here introducing their son Garfield to the beloved animals they called friends. In the days leading up to their deaths, they would-" The narrator was cut short, for black energy had flashed across the television, its screen cracking instantly and a low buzzing noise sounding its demise. Raven was too late however, for Beast Boy, Garfield Logan, had curled into himself, the tears no longer falling in silence as great, heaving sobs racking his body as the wound of his parents loss reopened itself and his gloved fingers hid the face that so often broke into a grin, but now lay breaking on his hands.

Raven set her book down and moved to him, placing her arms around the changeling in one of her rare hugs. No words were exchanged between them, but Beast Boy took his hands from his face and returned Ravens calm embrace with one of his own, those great, terrible gasps softening as he let loose his pain, taking strength in his team mates unspoken comfort and understanding.

Cyborg, alerted to the televisions damage, came into the room frowning, but with a joke on his lips. All that died away, when he saw his friends holding each other. Seeing Beast Boys shaking frame and Ravens small, worried frown made him decide, rather quickly, that the TV could be fixed in the morning. Quietly, he left, and the two were none the wiser, for Beast Boys eyes were filled with his tears and Ravens thoughts were filled with them also.

In the morning, Robin pretended not to notice as the two were awakened by the sound of him making coffee, he pretended not to see as they left the room and returned to their own beds.

He pretended not to notice that Beast Boy had been crying, nor that Raven had been holding him in their sleep.

Robin knew that pain, and later, when no one was listening, he would ask about it.

But for now, Beast Boy needed sleep.

 _They_ needed sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

He wasn't in the tower.

As Robin checked the usual places that the Green Teen would frequent, he began to wonder what had finally made his friend break.

All the jokes, the pranks, and the laughter that Beast Boy brought into the world were genuine, they weren't some elaborate ruse to trick people into thinking he was happy, it wasn't an act. The changeling was truly a happy soul, but that natural joy did well to hide his pain, did well to convince people there was no pain at all.

Robin knew though.

As he passed through the common area for the fifth time that day, Raven called from the couch. "Robin. If you're running laps of the Tower I'd appreciate you not doing it next to where I'm reading."

"Sorry Raven, I'm not running laps, just looking for Beast Boy, I think he may have gone out though, I haven't found him anywhere." The Boy Wonder admitted sheepishly.

"Did you check the rock?"

"The rock?"

"The rock."

"What rock?"

"Down by the shore, there's a big rock overlooking the water that he sits on when he needs to be alone and think. Granted that doesn't happen often, but it happens. He's probably there now." Raven explained, her eyes not leaving the novel in her hands.

Robin blinked a few times as he processed the new information, and tried to understand how Raven knew it, yet he did not. "Oh. Thanks Raven, I'll… Let you get back to reading then."

" _Finally_." She said, turning her page.

It was disconcerting for Robin to see Beast Boy so still, so subdued.

Certainly there were times he had withdrawn from the team, but it was always so expressive, when he was sad he would cry, when he was angry he would shout. This… This emptiness was so unnatural to look upon that Robin was unnerved to see it.

Sitting down next to the shell of his youngest team mate, Robin chose not to break the silence, waiting as Garfield gathered himself and the blankness that had become his eyes settled on the mask of his leader. "What's up Rob? Do you need me for something?"

Robin smiled sardonically. "No, I just want to talk."

Beast Boy sighed and nodded. "I thought you might."

"Aren't you always telling Raven not to bottle things up?" Robin said with a grin.

Beast Boy picked up a stone, inspecting it briefly before skipping it across the water. "I never thought you'd turn my words around on me man, that's not fair."

Robin tilted his head. "I don't fight fair, you know that. So… Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't know dude, part of me wants to just lick my wounds alone in peace, another part wants to scream and cry and curl up in a ball until I feel better, but that's not how it works." Beast Boy trailed off, watching a seagull ride the wind and hover in place. "I should be over it right? They died when I was 10, I shouldn't have any tears left."

Robin leant back, bracing his hands against the rock beneath them. "It doesn't go away, not really. My family died when I was barely 8 and I still can't get to sleep some nights thinking about how things would be different if they'd lived, or if I'd died too. That's not fair though, not to them or to us. We can't let the pain of their death get in the way of our life, that's not the kind of legacy they would want to leave us."

Stunned, Beast Boy watched Robin for a moment. It was rare that the Boy Wonder revealed so much about himself in a single conversation, it had taken them _years_ just to learn his name was "Dick" (a fact that Beast Boy and Cyborg did not let go uncommented upon) and even then it was through Starfire slipping up around them, not Robin himself, that had led to this revelation.

Garfield turned slowly back to the waves. "I guess you're right. It doesn't stop me from feeling so crappy though."

"There isn't much that can stop that." Robin acknowledged, sharing a sad smile with his younger friend. "So are you going to tell me about Raven?"

"Well, she's a girl that lives in the tower, wears purple cloaks a lot, sometimes she even sits on the couch with us." Beast Boy quipped.

Robin snorted. "You know what I mean, are you two a thing?"

"You sound like a kid from one of those bad high school dramas that Cy and Starfire watch. We're friends dude, just friends. Besides, I'm obnoxious, messy and green, even if I did like her that way, I doubt there's much of a chance she's into _this_ walking disaster." Beast Boy said, gesturing to himself.

"Fair point, but here's something you haven't considered, Raven doesn't care when boys wink at her."

Garfield frowned, looking at the leader he often thought of as a genius, now questioning that regard. "So what, dude?"

Robin smirked. "She cared when _you_ winked at her, right?"

And so saying, Robin stood, brushed himself off and left the shapeshifter puzzling over this new information, but in his puzzlement, the sadness had fled his mind once more.

Through the window above, a purple shape moved a second too late as Robin glanced up.

"Not much chance indeed." He chuckled.


	4. Chapter 4

Starfire, contrary to popular belief, was quite perceptive. She noticed how Raven would shift slightly, whenever Beast Boy moved from the couch to the kitchen. She saw her lips quirk at the sides, just a little, when he entered the room for breakfast. She saw Beast Boy blush when Ravens hand brushed his at the table. She could see how much more he worried when she was hurt. When the Titans sat for a movie, she noticed that only once the changeling had asked her, would Raven join them, and how happy it made the green teen that she was there.

Starfire, Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran was many things, but a fool was not one of them.

She knew there was something more to the two than friendship, she saw it in the way they moved, the way they fought, the way he laughed around _her_ and the way she softened around **him**.

"Do you think that Friend Beast Boy and Friend Raven are not telling us something Dick?" She asked Robin quietly, as they walked through the Jump City Botanic Gardens. "They seem so close lately."

"I don't think so Kori. Beast Boy can hardly stop himself from telling us the plot of a movie he's seen, much less keep a relationship secret." Laughed the Boy Wonder. "Besides, he and I talked about it, Beast Boy isn't all that sure Raven likes him in the same way."

Starfire considered this for a moment, her hand catching Robins as the two crossed over a small stream. "I think Friend Beast Boy is mistaken."

Robin flashed a surprised glance at her before nodding, his smile turning curious as he regarded the alien princess. "I think so as well. How are you so sure though? I only just found out about this whole thing a couple days ago."

"It is _obvious_!" She laughed, drifting into the air slightly at the joy brought about by two of her favourite people finding such happiness in one another. "Friend Beast Boy turns off the games of video when she reads, because he knows she dislikes the noise. Friend Raven never makes her tea with milk of the cow around him, because she knows it upsets him, even though he does not say it."

Robin released her hand to sit on a rock by the trail watching her admiringly as she drifted above the garden path. "You should be the detective here, I had to catch them asleep together on the sofa before putting it together in my head."

Starfire giggled, moving over to sit with him. "You're amazing with everything but feelings, on Tamaran people must know emotions, both their own and others, for it is where our power comes from and seeing it in battle is crucial."

Robin grinned ruefully, moving his face closer to hers. "I'm pretty good with _some_ feelings. Like now, for instance, you feel like kissing me."

Starfire, not one for being patient, grasped the back of his neck and pulled his lips to hers, humming in agreement.

Cyborg, meanwhile, was wrestling both with the engine of the T-Car and his own thoughts.

"It ain't your damn business Cy. The human hairball and Rae are grown enough to look after themselves, no need for any help from you." Cyborg sighed in exasperation as he straightened up, wiping oil from his hands with a cloth. "It's not like you're any good with making the ladies stick around anyway."

"What about the boys?"

Cyborg- big, strong Cyborg, **squealed** as he spun around, finding the purple haired sorceress herself perched atop his workbench, a half-smile resting on her face.

"Raven! Don't do that to me girl, I almost had a heart attack!" He gasped, clutching his metal chest theatrically. "You ah… Didn't hear _everything_ I said right?"

"I heard enough." She supplied, her gravely tones doing well to hide most of her amusement. "And you're wrong, sort of, I do need your help."

Cyborg looked, really looked at her then, at her tired eyes and her slightly tangled hair. He moved a few steps closer to her. "Anything Raven, you know I've got your back."

"I… I don't know what to do. About Garfield or… about how he makes me feel at least. I thought I could just meditate on it and let this thing I have with him go, but that didn't work. What's happening to me Vic?" She asked, her voice quiet and just a little scared.

Cyborg, who in another life was the college football star Victor Stone, knew exactly what was happening to Raven. He had seen dozens of girls go through the same thing, with his team mates, with him.

"You're falling for him." Cyborg said, a sad smile on his face. "Falling hard too."

"No, no I know what that feels like. Malchior tricked me into it, this isn't what I felt then." Raven shook her head, her arms wrapping around herself as the memory jabbed at her and a drill shattered on the bench beside her. She sighed deeply, embracing the feeling and pushing it aside to meditate on later. "This is **different**."

"Of course it's different. Beast Boy isn't some evil little prick bent on..." Cyborg took a few breaths himself, moving on. "It's different, because he's different. How long have you felt like this? Do you _love_ him?"

"Of course I love him. I love all of you." Raven said nonchalantly, as though such a thing should be obvious. "You're my friends."

"No, that's not what I meant and you know it." Her tall friend snorted. "How long has our B-Boy made you lose sleep Rae?"

"That's only just started." She muttered, looking away from him. " I didn't lose sleep until I realized what was happening, and I started considering what it meant. I've been feeling like this about him since… Maybe a little before Trigon attacked."

"That long?" Cyborg gaped. "It's a miracle the Tower is still standing if you've been holding it in all that time. Most people get over a crush in a month or so. I'd bet my motherboard that _this_ , this is something else."

"Something like what?"

Cyborg smiled wickedly. "Girl, I don't think you don't just love him. You're _in love_ with him."

The lights exploded.


	5. Chapter 5

Beast Boy woke to the sound of whimpering.

In his groggy, half asleep state, he stumbled from bed and tried to find the source of the noise. It took several seconds for him to realize that his room was in fact, silent.

It was coming from down the hall, from _Raven's_ room.

Sighing, the shapeshifter sat back down on his mattress, resting his elbows on his knees and rubbing the ache from hands that had just remembered the strain he placed them under the day before. They had stopped the H.I.V.E Five from hijacking an armored car laden with jewels, in the heat of battle Gizmo had called to Raven and his words chilled them all.

"Have a great birthday tomorrow, **demon**."

Beast Boy, according to what Cyborg had told him about it later, lost control and reverted to his human form. He had snarled and dashed Gizmo to the concrete with his gloved fists, knocking the criminal into unconsciousness with a flurry of blows and pivoting to slam a gorilla's worth of knuckles into Mammoth's jaw as he came to intervene.

The green teen had looked for Raven after the other H.I.V.E members had been captured, but she was nowhere to be found.

Now, staring at the wall and unwillingly intruding on her private moment with the darkness that she so rarely allowed to overcome her, Beast Boy hated himself for that slip in control. He should have known that it would solve nothing, he should have gone to her in support, but instead the beastly nature he was so aptly named for was allowed free reign and he had simply brought more pain into the world, rather than helping his friend deal with hers.

His bedside clock read 12:03am, and the birthday girl was in pain, crying while the monster she shared a floor with listened. He could never find sleep again tonight, as much as he wished to give her the privacy she deserved. The same keen senses that led him to the pleas of a lost child now kept him prisoner in the waking world while the girl down the hall fell to pieces.

Raven, curled up in her room, let go a single agony filled gasp.

Beast Boy's door was barely closed by the time he reached her own, a gentle salvo of taps announcing him.

"Rae, can I come in?" He breathed.

"Go. Away." The sorceress replied, her voice was even, deadpan in execution. If she had been speaking to any other Titan it would have sounded perfectly fine, but the pointed ears of her floor-mate found the broken intake of breath, the patter of tear drops on sheets.

"Raven, I can't stop you from feeling like this, but I _can_ help you through it." Beast Boy insisted. "I know you must think I'm an idiot, and after yesterday I can understand why, but even an idiot knows you don't shut people out when you're in pain Rae."

Silence met him in response, such profound quiet that Beast Boy thought she had cast a spell.

"If you don't want to be seen like this, that's fine, but I'm not leaving." He said, sliding down the wall beside her door. "I'll sit out here and talk about the migration habits of blue whales all night if I have to, just so you know I'm here. It might even put you to sleep, though the kind of dreams people have when listening to facts about whales probably get weird. Let's see… There's a pod that goes passed Africa during late autu-"

Raven's door slid open, the girl herself stepping out wrapped in her cloak to look down at him, dressed in the boxers and loose white shirt he had worn to bed. "I don't think you're an idiot."

"What?" Beast Boy frowned.

"You said I think you're an idiot." She said uneasily shifting her weight and looking away. "I don't. You were angry that Gizmo brought up what I did and acted on instinct, protecting a friend. That doesn't make you an idiot."

" _You_ didn't do those things Rae." The changeling said softly, rising slowly and stepping closer so that he could look her in the eye. " **Trigon** killed those people, **Trigon** did terrible things, but _you_ stopped him. You saved us,  all of us."

Raven shook her head, stepping back towards her room. "It never would have happened without me Garfield. If I had never come to earth, never even been _born_ than the world would have been a better place, a happier place."

"Don't say that." Beast Boy whispered, his own eyes watering. "Rae, you've saved so many people, not just after Trigon. You've saved hundreds, maybe _thousands_ of people with the Titans. You've helped tens of thousands stay happy and whole by making sure their kids, their siblings, their **parents** come home that night. You're the reason the Titans even exist!" He exclaimed, leaning down to peer up at the eyes she kept downcast. "A world without you isn't a world I want to live in. Not now, not ever."

Raven stared at him for a short moment, then a long moment. She stared, and the tears came back, but before Beast Boy could try to calm her again she had closed the small space between them and embraced him, her head buried in his shoulder as he tentatively returned the hug. "Thank you."

When they separated, Raven looked down at Beast Boy's hands with a frown. His gloves were off and for the first time she saw the claws that gleamed at their tips.

Beast Boy hurriedly put them behind him, blushing. "Sorry, did I scratch you?"

Raven shook her head, reaching out and gently tugging his left arm back, so that she could look at the talons in earnest. "Is this why you wear the gloves?"

"Yeah. They were a gift from Mento, or as close as a gift gets with him. I couldn't play with my toys or read my comics without eventually tearing them to shreds. People didn't want to shake my hand in fear that I'd accidentally hurt them. Mento wanted me to be respected, so he gave me the gloves."

Raven frowned, turning his hand over. "Do you like wearing them?"

"It's not about whether I like them, it's about whether I _need_ them." He shrugged. "They're not the most comfortable things but they keep me from hurting the objects and people around me."

Dropping his hand, Raven lent against the wall, the cloak falling away slightly to reveal a long black nightshirt. "I don't want to keep you up Beast Boy, I'm fine now."

"So you'll get some sleep?" He asked worriedly.

Raven hesitated, torn between telling the truth or lying to keep Beast Boy content. "I'm probably going to read, or meditate. If I go to sleep, I'll dream about **him** again."

Beast Boy pursed his lips for a moment, before taking Raven's arm and stepping into her room. "Please don't freak out, I know it's _your room_ and all, but I can help. Promise."

Raven, overcome by weariness and blinking tiredly, sighed as the shapeshifter directed her to the bed. "Fine, but I don't see what you can do to help me sleep, outside of turning into a whale and making noises."

"No transformations needed. Just, lay down and close your eyes." Insisted the changeling, who blushed and looked away as Raven undid her cloak and slid into the great bed that dominated the right half of her room.

No sooner had she settled than Beast Boy started talking in a deep, rhythmic way. The words made no sense to Raven, but she knew where they were from.

Beast Boy was chanting in Swahili.

His voice was even and constant, soft enough to be relaxing, but loud enough that she could hear him.

"You can't do this all night Garfield." She muttered, looking over to where Beast Boy had sat cross legged, his back and head lent against her wall. "You need to sleep too."

Beast Boy didn't move, his eyes glazed over and his body swaying ever so slightly. He was lost in the words, and in her exhaustion, Raven became lost in them too.

She dreamed of Africa.

To her chagrin, Beast Boy _could_ chant all night. The words had changed somewhere along the way, and in his sleep deprived state it didn't seem to phase Garfield that she had awoken. Shadows enveloped him and she moved the selfless, stupid boy into the bed she had just vacated, sleep overtaking him instantly, yet the words continued faintly. In the few minutes it took Raven to find her clothes for the day he had swapped from Brazilian to English to an odd language that sounded like French, but wasn't.

"It must be some kind of creole." Raven murmured as she phased to the bathroom to prepare for the day.

As she went about her morning routine it shook Raven, just how much she didn't know about a boy that she spent almost every day around. It had never occurred to her that he wore the gloves for a reason, or that he spoke other languages. Somehow, over the course of several years, she had failed to learn almost _anything_ about Beast Boy apart from the basics of his life.

"And now he's asleep in my bed." Raven muttered before the eyes of her reflection flew wide.

He was _asleep_ in her **bed**.

The mirror cracked.


	6. Chapter 6

Something was different.

As Beast Boy turned in place, blankets gathering around him, he pondered what it could be. The world seemed softer, a little less cramped too. For some reason his room smelled _awesome_ right now.

Except he didn't remember going back to his room.

In fact, he didn't remember having dark blue sheets either.

"Oh _god_." He whispered, eyes going wide as he sat bolt upright in Ravens room, in Raven's **BED**.

The empath herself was floating at the base of the bed, cross legged and calm, her eyes closed.

"This is where I die, goodbye cruel world." Garfield muttered to himself, desperately trying to figure out when he had found his way into the penultimate crime on record in Titans Tower. Being in Raven's room was one thing, but _this_ , this was sacrilege.

"Relax, Garfield. _I_ put you there." The sorceress sighed as her eyes came slowly open and the ghost of a smile touched her lips. "You can stop panicking."

"You put me in your bed?" The changeling inquired, a frown forming over his bemused eyes. " _Why_?"

"Because you were half dead from staying up all night and I was half asleep when I woke up, so moving you into the bed seemed reasonable to Before Her Morning Tea Raven."

"And what about After Her Morning Tea Raven? Why didn't you move me into **my** bed after waking all the way up?" Beast Boy asked as he slipped from beneath the sheets and shifted into a cat to stretch properly.

"Because I didn't want to wake you up. It seemed rude to me after you worked so hard to help me sleep." Raven drifted to the ground, her legs unfolding and her cloak falling around her. "Though I must admit it was also in part because I was curious to hear how many languages you cycled through before getting back to English."

The green teen groaned as he shifted back into his human form, rubbing his face with his hands to hide the blush creeping over his cheeks. "I was sleep-talking? What did I say?"

"In English? Not a lot… How many languages _do_ you know by the way?" Raven tilted her head, a rare gleam of curiosity coloring their amethyst depths.

Beast Boy rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully, sitting back down on the bed once he realized they were going to talk at length. "I've never really counted… Eleven, I suppose? Not counting English and different dialects within those languages? Yeah, eleven sounds right." He nodded vaguely before smiling at her. "I picked up a lot of them talking with kids in the villages and towns near where my parents would be researching. It's hard playing make believe in two languages you know? Mostly they're creole and pidgin versions of full languages, but I can get my point across well enough."

"I never really considered whether you spoke anything other than English, I knew you had moved around a lot when you were younger but-"

"But you never thought I'd have strayed far from my folks, yeah." Beast Boy smiled sadly. "Look, Rae, that night with the documentary, it caught me by surprise. Sometimes I just can't help but get a little emotional about them, but for the most part I'm fine."

"Okay Garfield." Raven relented, seeing no need to bring up the uncomfortable fact that she knew he was lying. "Where did you learn that chant?"

"Here and there, mostly from the tribes further up on the Congo, but bits and pieces I made up. I think somewhere I slipped up and just started singing in the same voice, the words don't really matter though." He admitted, rising once more and making his way for the door. "Look, Rae, I know you don't usually go in for the charity appearances, but I've got a thing on tomorrow that I think you'll like. Will you go?"

Raven came to see him out and lingered by the door as he waited on her answer. "I'll consider it." 

At ten the next morning, early for Beast Boy, the pair flew from the Tower, Beast Boy leading the way in the form of an emerald hawk, swooping low over parks so that the children could catch glimpses of him and wave. They came to the city center and landed at the last place Raven expected.

"A retirement home?" She whispered to him as they walked through the automatic doors, the smell of disinfectant and old people drifting to her through the ventilation system.

"It's the biggest one in Jump City. People here like it when we stop by, it helps them know that they haven't been forgotten. Usually Cy or Starfire comes along, they're both at the hospital today instead." Her fanged companion explained. "I usually come here though, the older people love seeing all my different forms, one of the guys, Denis, he says seeing a tiger here is easier than flying to India." Beast Boy chuckled, signing in at the desk and asking the desk clerk if her son had recovered okay from his broken arm.

Once they were sent through Beast Boy again assumed the lead, as Raven knew nothing about the buildings layout. "Okay, so you're a hit with the grandparents, why am I here? To see your aging fans?"

"No Rae." Beast Boy said gravely, pausing as his hand fell on a door that read "Recreations Room". "You're here to see your fans."

Raven raised her eyebrows as Garfield opened the door, enthusiastically greeting the senior citizens that awaited them beyond it.

The Shapeshifter came alive immediately, fist bumping with older guys in wheelchairs, hugging wrinkled women and answering questions about his health, whether he was eating enough, if he could change into a certain kind of cat to remind someone of a pet that had sadly passed away not too long ago.

Raven had glided into a corner early on and found no reason to move until an elderly woman with a walker came up to her with a kindly smile. "Dear, your friend is doing a lot of work keeping us at bay. I hope you don't intend to let him be mobbed out there."

Raven returned her smile as she glanced at the green teen, his laughter spreading to the retirees and his form changing to meet requests. "I don't think he's in _too much_ trouble. I wouldn't want to get in the way of anyone that wants to see him."

"And what about people who want to see you?"

Raven raised her eyebrow again, thrown for a moment by the absurdity of the question. "Who would want to see me?"

" _I_ would." The wizened woman said firmly. "Dear, my grandchildren would be dead if not for you. My son Fredrick said you stopped a building from collapsing, long enough for them to get out, with that black energy of yours. My granddaughter will grow up and live to be old and frail like me, because of **you**." Reaching out, the older woman grasped Raven's hand and pulled her into a surprisingly strong embrace. " _Thank you_." She whispered fiercely.

Raven was gobsmacked, and she continued to be as the woman drew away and another took her place, thanking her vehemently for stopping a van from crashing into her nieces store. Then a man who's great-grandchildren were alive because she had pulled their carts from a malfunctioning roller-coaster.

On and on they came, and slowly Raven had moved from her corner to stand beside Garfield, who's smile stretched from ear to ear, regardless of the species he happened to be at any given time. The list of relatives stretched on.

A nephew who had been in the way of a careening van that she had swatted aside, grandchildren at a baseball game who had written to their Grammy about the purple haired girl that had beaten up a monster made of cement before he could hurt them, a wife that had told her near blind husband how Raven had thrown a bomb into the ocean before it exploded in the mall she had been shopping in.

Finally, one of the oldest residents came up to her, his fingers calloused and hard from a life of work, gripping one Raven's hands between his own. "That demon. He would have killed us, **all** of us. I wasn't ready to go, it wasn't my time. That might be selfish of me, but I have lived through too many wars and too few happy moments to shuffle of this mortal coil yet _dammit_. That would have been the end for me though, for everyone, if not for you." He said, his eyes glistening and his voice rasping as the weight of his words took their toll. "Some people, they might try to hurt you with their words, they might call you names or blame you for things they don't yet understand. _I_ understand though. That great red fiend came from hell calling for our souls and you sent him **back**. I'm old, and not long for the grave, but I can go there content in knowing that you got to hear me give thanks. Lord knows you deserve more than that and I'd give it if I could, but for now." He lent down, placing an ever so soft kiss on her hand. "Thank you."

His sentiments were echoed by the others, and Raven began to grow uneasy in their praise, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and confusion. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

Beast Boy's gloved hand encircled her own and he led her out of the room, calling farewells and apologies as he went. The first woman, the one that had hugged Raven, smiled as she passed by and that was the final straw.

Beast Boy breezed past the receptionist with barely a hurried "Goodbye", his steps falling quickly as he turned down an empty side street, pulling the empath to him as she sobbed. "I'm so sorry Raven, I didn't know hearing that would make you so upset."

Raven shook her head, bunching Garfield's shirt in her fists and pulling him closer. "I'm not upset, just surprised." She laughed. "I didn't know… I didn't think people thought about me like that."

"Of course they do Rae." The changeling said gently, taking her shoulders and pushing her forwards slightly so that he could see her eyes. "You're amazing! Everyone thinks so, everyone but you. I kind of hoped, I still hope, that hearing the folks here would finally help you realize it."

Raven, stoic, controlled Raven, lost her head somewhere in his words, in the feelings that echoed them. She threw her arms around the startled green boy and **kissed** him, the surprise and momentum of her sudden embrace pushing him up against the wall behind them. Beast Boy was quick to catch on and his arms wove around her as they came together.

Too soon, Raven's senses returned to her and she pulled away, Garfield's grip falling away the moment she drew back.

The two regarded one another for several charged moments, Raven's lips forming a small "o" and Beast Boy's eyebrows raising ever further as he considered the implications of what had just happened between the two.

Beast Boy drew a breath and Raven teleported away, leaving him to slide down the wall and stare at the sky in a daze.

" _What_ the _ **fuck**_." He asked the sky.

It did not deign to answer.


	7. Chapter 7

Raven paced in her room, trying to come up with a rational reason for her behavior and coming up short.

Sighing, she picked up her mirror and spoke.

"Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos."

On a cliff in Nevermore, her emotions convened.

"RAVEN!" Squealed Happy, lunging for the sorceress and enveloping her in a crushing hug. "You finally did it! Oh my gosh, you actually _kissed_ him!"

"I know, I was there." Raven remarked drily, looking over the pink clone to the emotions gathered beyond her. "What do the rest of you say? Was it a mistake?"

Timid winced. "What are the others going to think? Cyborg will make fun of us, Robin might not trust that we can do our job properly with Garfield around, he might not let us patrol with him any more. And Starfire..." The gray Raven shuddered. "Starfire won't leave us alone if she knew, she would want to find out everything we feel. We aren't ready for this, with how our powers work we could hurt someone, we might even hurt Garfield."

Knowledge adjusted her glasses as she nodded. "Timid is right, there's a chance our powers will act erratically if we pursue Beast Boy further. He might be fascinating and kind, but should we risk our control for that?"

Passion almost leaped at the yellow hooded emotion. "OF COURSE IT'S WORTH IT!" She turned to Raven. "Gar isn't just _kind_ , he's sweet and brave and absolutely **GOOD**. He won't make us _worse_ , this is what we need! Being without him would tear us apart and not being able to express ourselves wouldn't just hurt us, it'd _kill_ us Raven."

Knowledge tilted her head. "That… Isn't completely wrong."

Rage snorted, a sneer settling on her lips. "He's lazy, weak willed and patronizing, you saw how he was with Gizmo, and Adonis before him, the shifter wouldn't let us fight out own fights." Her sneer turned savage, the four red eyes of Trigon burning under the shadow of her scarlet hood as she turned to Timid, who shied away. "BUT ROBIN WILL NOT TAKE HIM AWAY."

Raven raised her right brow at that, but let it pass, noting Rage's conflicted thoughts on the matter. She turned to the brown cloaked Raven. "Sloth? Do you have any thoughts."

Sloth yawned, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and shrugged. "He would make life easier." She said with an odd finality, turning to Rude.

Smiling lewdly, Rude wiggled her eyebrows and made a suggestive gesture with her hands. "Why get rid of the cow if we haven't milked it yet?" The others groaned and shook their heads disapprovingly. "What? We were all thinking it! The snot has really grown into those tights of his, and he's taller than us now, which is hot." She winked at Raven, making more gestures that had her violet eyes rolling, even though the corner of her lips tugged upwards.

Brave threw her hands in the air. "Why are we even talking about this! Garfield is _amazing_! He's the perfect guy for us and all the baggage we come with. He's strong, funny, handsome, brave. He's even a different _color_ , just like us! The guy is a catch and we can't let things that may or may not happen hold us back from what could be the best thing that's **ever** happened to us!"

Lastly, Raven looked back to Happy, who had stepped away from her and remained uncharacteristically silent, her pink cloak fluttered a little in the ever present wind that blew through Nevermore. "I know you like him Happy, but why?"

Happy grew in size, just a little, as she bit her bottom lip hesitantly. Meeting Raven's gaze, her words were simple. "We love him."

The others, regardless of their stance, nodded in agreement.

Raven sighed, rubbing her temples gently. "What should I do?"

Knowledge shook her head. "We don't know. The only other boy we've even tried to love was-"

" _ **Malchior**_." Spat Rage, her fists tightening.

"He won't be like that." Passion stated. "And we won't act the same way."

"We should wait." Timid said, hugging herself. "We should see what he does next, how he acts. We don't know that he feels the same way."

"Don't we?" Brave asked, laughing. "I don't remember him pushing us away in that alley."

"That was just a kiss though, we're talking about a relationship, about _love_. What if he isn't ready?" Timid muttered. "What if we scare him away?"

Knowledge pursed her lips. "Waiting would help us see how he feels, and how we feel."

Sloth blinked slowly. "We wouldn't have to do anything, just watch."

Passion gritted her teeth. "If we don't act we might _lose_ him just as easily, he might think we're being capricious, or that we changed our mind! We can't let him think we were leading him on."

"We aren't exactly locking lips with every second guy though." Rude remarked sardonically. "He's an idiot, but he isn't fucking stupid."

"We need a time limit." Knowledge announced.

They all turned to Happy.

"I think," She looked up at the sky, then down to her feet, her gaze wondered until it came back to the original Raven. "Three days. We give him three days to think and to do whatever he decides to do."

Raven sighed. "And if he does nothing?"

"Then we do something."

That night, Beast Boy didn't return to the Tower.

At dinner, Robin told them that he had sent a message through the communicator, saying he needed to "Commune with nature" and that they shouldn't worry, he wasn't going far enough that they would be short a Titan if an alert went out. He was going to be back tomorrow, though he didn't say when.

"I've never seen B-Boy "Commune" with anything other than a burrito before." Cyborg quipped. "He ain't some spiritual type, what's out in the woods that isn't here?"

Raven knew what was out there, privacy. Here in the Tower, the only place a Titan could be alone was in their room, and even then Raven could sense their thoughts, Cyborg knew their vitals and Beast Boy could hear them. The Tower wasn't a great place if you wanted to be alone.

"That doesn't matter." Robin said. "If Beast Boy wants to spend a night out of the Tower, that's his business. We don't need to know the details." Raven must have been seeing things, because she swore the Boy Wonder glanced at her before rejoining Starfire in conversation.

She didn't sleep much that night, being too anxious to close her eyes. Without Beast Boy down the hall the Tower felt lessened, colder. He would stay up most nights, playing video games or reading comics until passing out where he sat or lay. That was why he slept in so long, because it was morning before he closed his eyes most of the time.

Cyborg had said once, that Beast Boy could hear the waves crashing outside the Tower, that sometimes it distracted him from their games. Perhaps, just as the waves kept him from concentrating on the games, the other Titans kept him from sleeping.

Robin practiced martial arts in his spare time, and his detective work kept him up at night from what Starfire had told her. Cyborg would work on his machines and the T-Car, powering down only when he needed to. Starfire watched internet videos of cats and would talk to Silkie in Tamaranian. Raven herself would read and meditate, often repeating her mantra as she did.

With all that noise, perhaps Beast Boy simply couldn't get to sleep if the others were awake.

Was he asleep right now? Out beyond the limits of Jump City, was he sleeping as a wolf, curled up in a cave? Perhaps he had gone to the ocean depths, an eel amongst the coral. Beneath the dunes perhaps, a rattlesnake lost in the desert rocks and shifting mounds of sand?

Wherever he was, Raven doubted his thoughts were of much else but her. She was surprised to find there was a small comfort in that, at least. The idea that he too, was thinking of what they were and how it might change.

She had asked her emotions if she had made a mistake that day, but none had given a direct answer. She knew now that it was a stupid question, for given the chance to do it over she would kiss him again in a heartbeat.

Finally calm, Raven let herself drift off and rested.

That morning, she found Robin had risen before her.

It had happened before, but only rarely. The young man nodded to her over his copy of the Gotham Times, refusing to break the silence of early morning. She made tea, fetched her book from the coffee table and sat to read opposite him, the routine felt soothing after the chaos that was yesterday. Raven could feel his curiosity burning, something she doubted was a result of the paper, which bore the smug face of Commissioner Gordan and a headline that read "City Sees Unprecedented Second Week Without Major Incident"

Shrugging it off, Raven settled in with her novel.

Breakfast came and went, Cyborg seeming miffed that he was robbed of the carnivore vs vegan argument, Starfire tried to distract them all from Beast Boy's absence with the story of how she had met Batgirl, making Robin blush furiously and stutter as he interjected indignantly. Apparently Dick and "Babs" had been something of an item before Robin left Gotham, a fact that delighted Starfire to no end.

"We spoke much about Robin and life as female heroes-that-are-super, along with beauty tips and the difference in earth arts-of-the-martial and those of Tamaran." She enthused, smiling brightly.

"Didn't you think it was awkward talking with someone Robin used to be… Y'know, _together_ with?" Cyborg inquired, scratching his head.

"Of course not Friend Cyborg! Batgirl is wondrous, and she was happy that Dick wasn't alone here in Jump City." Starfire explained. "She even thought we should go on the date-of-the-double with her and her partner!"

Robin groaned looked to the ceiling. "God, Superman, Bruce. Whoever's listening right now, _slay me_."

There.

At the edge of her senses, Raven felt him approach.

"Beast Boy is back." She said, turning her page. "He's on the roof."

The elevator dinged a moment later, the doors opening to reveal the green teen, his grin was easy going and confident as he slipped into his seat beside Raven, who had no doubt he could hear her pulse, for it was deafening in her own ears.

"Hey guys, sorry for the solo camping trip, I had some stuff to- I had some stuff." He laughed, picking an apple from the fruit bowl and munching on it. "What'd I miss?"

"Star met Robin's ex-girlfriend, and she's _stoked_ about it." Cyborg exclaimed, eliciting another defeated groan from their leader.

"Dude, what?! Isn't there some kind of fight to the death for that kind of thing on Tamaran?" Beast Boy wondered. "I swear you said there was."

Starfire's eyes were grave as she regarded the changeling. "Only if there is doubt your partner is not loyal to you. If Babs were to try and steal Robin's heart, I would take _hers_ and eat it." The redhead smiled and laughed joyously. "But there is no need for such things, as Robin would not stray from me and Batgirl does not do the pining for him."

Beast Boy, suddenly having lost his appetite, put the apple down. "I was joking Star, holy crap. People are METAL on Tamaran."

Cyborg nodded sagely. "We honestly shouldn't be surprised, she keeps telling us all the messed up stuff that happens there."

Robin, having gotten over his brief period of abject horror from Starfire's declaration, cleared his throat. "Well, moving on from that. Now that Beast Boy is back I can tell you about the Gala we're going to."

" **What**?" Raven barked.

" _Damn_." Came Cyborg's defeated mutter.

Beast Boy was quiet, and, as Raven reached for his emotions to gauge his reaction, she gasped quietly.

She couldn't feel them.

Stealing a glance at him from the corner of her eye, she found Garfield's eyes blank and his face slack, his mouth moving slightly in silence.

He was blocking her out.

Robin held up his hands, unaware of the silent battle between the shapeshifter and the sorceress. "I know, I know, but we have to go to this one. Our battles do a great deal of damage to the City, and even though most people know it's to protect them, that doesn't change the fact that insurance can only go so far. We have to show up, all of us, because this event is a fund raiser for "Damages Beyond Control Of The City" The Mayor wants us there, she made it very clear we are required to attend."

"Man, I thought the Justice League had that covered?" Cyborg asked, leaning back with a sigh.

"They have funds available for reconstruction and reparation, but it can only stretch so far for non-League members like us." Robin told them, shrugging sympathetically. "Bottom line is that we're going."

"When is it?" Raven asked, noting that Beast Boy's lips moved a little faster when she spoke.

"The day after tomorrow, 7pm sharp. They said we could bring guests if we want, and that we should wear "Something other than the tights we fight in"." Robin shrugged again and moved to leave, Starfire close beside him. "Sorry guys, it **has** to be done."

Cyborg grumbled as he got up and gathered the dirty dishes from around the table, cramming them all in the dishwasher before heading off to the garage so that he could calm down with some good old car maintenance. This, of course, left Beast Boy and Raven alone.

Raven kept her eyes on the words of her book, though every time her team mate moved she felt it in her bones.

"Raven."

Her name, all it took was for him to say her _name_ and a chair was thrown across the room. It clattered noisily against the wall, but did not break. "Yes, Garfield?"

"Look at me, please." He urged, apprehension filling the room as whatever defense he had mounted against her empathy fell. He didn't smile when her eyes met his, that blank facade still covering his expressive features. "Did you mean to- What I mean is, do you feel... Are we a **thing** now?"

"I don't know." Raven said truthfully. "I'd like if we were, but I'd understand if you don't, if you don't feel that way about me."

Garfield, in mind and expression, was overcome with surprise. "So yesterday wasn't some fluke, one time only accident? It wasn't a mistake?"

"Do _you_ think it was?" Raven frowned, unable to stop the hurt from creeping into her voice.

"No!" Beast Boy exclaimed. "I was… I am- Dieu vous êtes assez!" He let go an explosive breath, looking away from her. "You're everything I could ever want. I only regret that I didn't make the first move."

Raven hesitated, before reaching over and placing her hand on his knee. "Who needs to make the _second_ move, so that you don't regret it?"

The gears in Garfield's head jammed for a moment, as he processed what was happening. Raven gasped a little at his swiftness, for one moment he was frozen in his seat and the next his eyes were inches from her own, a pause lasting only a heartbeat, as the changeling waited to see if she would pull away.

She didn't.

Their first kiss had been like wildfire, all passion and primal emotion, burning between the two without an understanding of what it meant or where it would lead.

The second was a slow burn. Garfield's lips brushed hers lightly, his hands tracing the curve of her back and the line of her jaw. A tingling sensation followed in the wake of his fingers, and as the kiss deepened, she felt herself slip.

The blender shattered.

They broke apart by reflex, Beast Boy's eyebrows arching upwards at the sight of the murdered kitchenware and a wordless question to Raven in the tilt of his head.

" **Oops**." She whispered.

They both laughed softly, getting to their feet and moving to clean up the remains of the appliance. "I suppose that means you didn't _hate_ letting me lead this time." Beast Boy said smugly, accepting the dustpan and brush from Raven as she rolled her eyes.

"I could do without the after show commentary." She observed, doing nothing to lessen the grin that was spreading over Garfield's face. "I need to meditate, but I'd like to talk with you later, about _this_." She said gesturing between them with her finger.

"No problem Rae." The shapeshifter acknowledged. "Just knock on my door when you're done."

Raven nodded shakily, levitating up towards the roof. "Oh, and Beast Boy?"

Garfield looked up curiously.

"Let's keep how I don't hate kissing you a secret for now."

As she disappeared, Beast Boy almost broke into dance.

 **Almost**.


	8. Chapter 8

It was later than she had planned, when Raven finished meditating. The sun was squarely in the middle of the sky, half the day had passed while she fixed all the loose wires that Beast Boy had set free within her just hours previous. Unfurling from her meditation form, Raven descended to the floor she shared with the shapeshifter and passed by her own door on the way to his.

Raven knocked, and then she knocked again.

Twice.

Beast Boy's door however, remained steadfastly closed with no sign of opening. Widening her senses as the monks of Azerath had taught her so many, yet so few years ago, Raven found Beast Boy to be soundly asleep, his emotions muted by the fog of heavy slumber.

Raising an eyebrow, Raven stepped through the door in a swirl of dark energy, finding that the room she remembered from their childhood had vanished.

Where the cluttered and overflowing set of drawers once were now sat an impressive flat-screen TV that was still playing a subtitled martial arts film, the desk that had once been piled high in comic books and CDs was now replaced by a bookshelf filled with those same items, perhaps the most shocking change was that no longer did Beast Boy rest in a bunk bed, but instead in a king sized bed raised 5 feet off the ground by a wooden base that had a series of cupboards and drawers within it.

Perhaps, thought Raven, his predatory instincts liked the higher position.

What was familiar about the room however, was the clutter. Garfield had obviously made an effort to clean up, with clothes and comic books strewn around the edges of the room, but none in it's center, there were action figures lining the shelves and tops of furniture, postures of famous video games and films lined the walls.

And everywhere, _everywhere_ was that green and blue color scheme.

Drifting up to the bed, Raven found the changeling lent against the wall, his head drooping and the remote he clutched slipping ever so slightly from his grip. Kneeling down beside him, Raven shook the green teen's shoulder gently. "Beast Boy, wake up. Beast Boy… _Garfield_."

Green lids flew open and the shapeshifter stared groggily at the sorceress for a moment before he blinked and wiped the sleep from his eyes. "Aww man. I tried to stay awake Rae, I swear. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night."

"It's alright, I didn't either." Raven said graciously, sitting down beside him on the mattress. "What were you dreaming about?"

"Not much." Beast Boy admitted, moving as though he was going to give her more space, but thinking better of it he settled in closer to her, their shoulders barely touching. "At first I was back on the boat- Well, at first it wasn't a great dream. Then, I think I was in my old house in Midway City."

"With the Doom Patrol?"

"Kind of." Garfield smiled. "I didn't think of them as **The Doom Patrol** back then, they were just family. Rita- _Elasti-Girl_ , she really helped me cope with all that happened after my folks passed away."

"Like you and the other Titans helped me?" Raven slipped a rare smile, bumping Beast Boy's shoulder gently.

Beast Boy flashed a wide grin in return, nodding. "Exactly like that."

They sat in companionable silence for a moment, Raven's eyes were drawn to the movie that was still going. It had several characters that could seemingly fly with no other power than their skill in kung-fu.

"Raven, you wanted to talk about _us_ , right?" Garfield said lightly, flicking his gaze to her and then back to the TV. "What exactly do you want to talk about?"

Raven sighed. "I don't want to shatter a lamp or break a toaster every time we kiss, or every time you do something nice that I wasn't expecting. We need to have some rules, probably a lot of rules."

"No kissing around breakable stuff, no surprises." Beast Boy shrugged. "I can handle that."

"It's not just that, I don't have a lot of practice with… Romance, I suppose you could call it." Raven admitted, her breath coming a little faster. "So I don't know how to handle everything yet. An accidental touch, a hug that lasts too long, an embarrassing story, **any** of it might make me lose control. I need to be calm, or things go wrong, they _always_ go wrong."

"Take it easy Rae." Beast Boy laughed, slipping his hand into hers. "We'll take it slow. You can get used to it, learn to be in control. Nothing's going to happen if you don't want it to."

"You're putting _me_ in charge?" Raven cocked an eyebrow. "I'm the one that almost jumped you in that alley, not the other way around."

"Okay, fair point." The emerald young man acknowledged, amusement dancing on his voice. "We'll learn together then. Figure out where the boundaries are and try to get a handle on where you and I are going."

Raven hummed in agreement, hesitantly resting her head on Beast Boy's shoulder while the people on his TV half danced and half fought over a skin of wine. Beast Boy stiffened slightly at the movement, but relaxed a second later, absorbed in the film.

"Why don't you want the others to know?" He murmured.

"I don't feel energetic enough to deal with Starfire interrogating me, or putting up with Robin and Cyborg making jokes at our expense." Raven replied, feeling a tinge of happiness color Garfield's emotions. "Unless you want that?"

"No, no." He said, a smile turning up the corners of his lips. "We can do the whole lit by moonlight secret affair thing. I just, don't like keeping stuff from the others, you know?"

"I'm not saying we **won't** tell them, I'm just saying not now." Came her half yawned reply. Something about Garfield's room and the riot of colors that they were watching made her eyelids heavy. "If you have a television in here, why do you go to the common room?"

"Because that's where everyone else is." He said simply. "Plus this one isn't hooked up to anything, so I can only watch stuff I have on disk."

"Mhmmm" Raven answered, her eyes closing as she succumbed to the sleepy atmosphere, her hand still holding Beast Boy's firmly.

Garfield tried not to jostle her too much as he draped his blanket over her and let himself drift off, a content smile fixed on his lips.

For the third time either remembered, there were no nightmares awaiting them.


	9. Chapter 9

The sound of a communicator going off, awoke the two later that day. It's insistent trilling cutting through one of the few pleasant dreams that Raven had ever found herself enjoying, wresting her from the warm embrace of slumber, and more cruelly, the warm embrace of Garfield.

Raven reached for the irritating device as Beast Boy rubbed his eyes blearily, finding the act of awakening far more difficult than his companion.

"Yes?" She yawned, watching as Robin frowned at her through the tiny monitor.

" _Raven_? Why do you have Beast Boy's communicator?" He asked worriedly. "Is he okay?"

Raven froze, her eyes racing to Garfield in a panic, but he could only shrug helplessly.

"He left it in the bathroom." She lied, keeping the communicator close to her face so that Robin couldn't see the wall behind her and it's obvious paint scheme. "I was on my way to give it back to him."

"... **Right**." Robin said, his eyes narrowed. "Well, when you _do_ return it, tell him that dinner is ready. Cy said he missed lunch and I don't want him distracted if we get called out because he's hungry."

"Okay, I'll tell him." Raven assured the Boy Wonder, watching from the corner of her eye as Garfield covered his mouth and heaved with silent laughter. "See you in a minute."

Beast Boy let his barely contained giggling free, holding his stomach and almost crying with laughter as the sorceress shook her head indignantly. "It's **not** funny Garfield."

"Then why are you smiling?" Beast Boy questioned, wiping a tear from his eye.

Raven quickly schooled her features, erasing any trace of amusement from her face. "I'm not."

This only served to bring on another bout of laughter from the shapeshifter, made worse when Raven tossed a pillow at him and rose in a huff. "While you're struggling to compose yourself, _I'm_ going to join the others at dinner."

The changeling waved an arm, struggling to talk through his mirth. "Hold on! I can behave, honest." He said, his fanged grin and snickering doing little to convince Raven of that fact. "Besides, you're meant to be telling me about dinner right? It'd look suspicious if I didn't show up with you."

"I suppose…" The sorceress mused, gliding to his door. "I need to brush my hair, so don't feel in any kind of a rush."

She moved through the door without opening it, her shadowy energy swirled in the wake of her form as she left. Beast Boy found himself staring long after she was gone.

In the common room, they found the others already seated, a veritable feast set out before them. Starfire cut off her story about how she had mistook a cardboard cut out of Superman as the real thing one time, catching sight of the mismatched pair. "Friends, where have you been all day?"

Sliding into her seat, Raven replied with a simple "Meditation." Which the others took at her word, since such a thing was not uncommon.

Beast Boy laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I fell asleep, didn't get much rest out in the woods."

Robin stared at him from across the table. "And why did Raven have your communicator? You're not the most organized guy, but even you don't leave your equipment just lying around."

"I had a shower after breakfast to get the smell of forest out of my hair, the communicator must have fallen out of my belt." Beast Boy lied, his eyes pining Raven to her seat as his guilt washed over her. "Raven found it on our bathroom floor."

Raven nodded at no one in particular trying to mask her own feelings of discomfort at lying to their leader.

Cyborg snorted. "B-Boy would lose his head if it wasn't attached to his neck, it was only a matter of time before his communicator ended up as a casualty. Let's forget that noise and _eat_ already! I didn't slave over a hot oven for my masterpieces to get cold."

Beast Boy flashed a grateful smile at his semi-mechanical friend, gladly piling tofu eggs, fruit and potatoes onto his plate. Raven was pleasantly surprised to find that someone (Probably Cyborg, considering how sweet it was) had thought to boil some tea for her.

Several moments passed in which all that could be heard was the sound of plates and silverware clashing as the food between was lost to hungry appetites.

Starfire broke the companionable silence with a beaming announcement. "I have decided who I will ask to accompany me to the Gala tomorrow!"

Cyborg smirked at her. "Let me guess, it's Ro- **Ow**!" He turned a glare upon the Boy Wonder, who had swiftly kicked him in the shin. "Fine, fine. Who is it Star?"

"It's _Robin_!" Kori burst out, looking to the masked young man with wide eyes. "You **will** go with me, right?"

Robin smiled indulgently. "Of course I'll go with-"

Starfire squealed and embraced her newly acquired date, lifting him into the air above the table enthusiastically. Below them, Cyborg passed Raven a sauce bottle as the two continued eating through the affectionate display. Beast Boy, however, watched them avidly and chewed slowly on his tofu eggs, deep in thought.

"Can you believe Star had to ask if Robin would go to the dance with her?" Garfield inquired as he and Raven rode the elevator to their floor. "The guy is crazy about her!"

Raven shrugged noncommittally. "Sometimes people are hard to gauge, and Starfire isn't great at predicting how Robin will react to things. Remember the birthday fiasco?"

Beast Boy chuckled. "Rob almost blew a fuse, I don't see what the big deal about people knowing when his birthday is though."

"He likes privacy." Raven reminded him as the elevator came to a halt. "It's not that weird."

They stepped through the sliding doors and walked slowly towards their rooms, Beast Boy raised an eyebrow. "So who were _you_ thinking of going with?"

"I hadn't thought about it." She answered truthfully. "I don't usually go with anyone to these things, you know that."

"Would you go with me?"

Raven stopped in her tracks, staring at the green Titan incredulously. Overhead, a light flickered and threatened to burst. " **What**?"

"I said," Beast Boy repeated patiently. "Would you go with _me_?"

The hallway itself seemed to hold it's breath as Raven stared down her incredibly, unfailingly unpredictable paramour. "What part of "Secret" fails to reach you in that perfect world you happen to be calling me from?"

Beast Boy's curious smirk widened into a ridiculously happy grin. "You think the perfect world is going to a dance with me?"

Raven shook her head. "That isn't what I meant Garfield." As Beast Boy's face began to fall, his eyebrows pulling together and hurt streaking through his emotions, the sorceress quickly added, "Not that you **aren't right**. It's just that… How can I go with you and not have the others know about us?"

Somewhat mollified, Beast Boy smiled at her wickedly. "We don't _need_ to tell the others." He drew her under his arm and waved the other in front of them. "Imagine it, you and me ("You and I." Raven corrects), star crossed lovers hiding their romance from the world, meeting at the punch bowl to offer each other whispered compliments, happening to meet on the dance floor by chance only to be whisked away from each other by our well meaning, yet utterly unaware friends, stolen kisses and rushed embraces in darkened corners, out of sight from prying eyes."

"Why have you put so much thought into this?" Asked Raven suspiciously. "Is this some kind of weird fantasy you envisioned as a preteen?"

"Yep." Garfield said happily. "I didn't get to go to highschool and this is how I pictured prom night, or what prom night seemed to be in al those romantic comedies Rita liked to watch. So, want to help me live out my dream Rae?"

Raven, poor lovestruck Raven, looked up at the young man that she adored and couldn't bring herself to crush that childish delight in his eyes. Swallowing nervously, she let out a half whispered "Fine."

Beast Boy's eyes went wide, and in his excitement, lent down to passionately kiss the amethyst haired girl of his dreams, who for her part, made a small noise of surprise before melting into the embrace.

The light above them, having had _quite enough_ of this whole fiasco, finally gave up it's struggle and exploded...

...Along with every other light on the floor.


	10. Chapter 10

It was the morning before the Gala and Raven found her wardrobe somewhat lacking when it came to "Gala" worthy attire.

Her civilian clothes, for the most part, were composed of jeans, some leggings, combat boots and a slew of hoodies and black tops. The few dresses in her possession were gifts from Starfire and _far_ too short in the sorceress's opinion. Sighing, Raven concluded that there was only one thing for it.

She needed to go shopping.

Slipping into aforementioned jeans, boots and hoodie, Raven sunk into her floor and moved through the tower to the basement, where the gym was located. There she found the alien princess, bench pressing what must have been the weight of a small building.

"Kori." She said, drawing the curiosity of her team-mate and friend. Raven rarely called any of them by their real names. "I need to find a dress. A new one. Preferably from somewhere discreet."

Starfire gasped and threw the weights down (causing a mild tremor) so that she could sit up and look into the smaller girl's eyes. "Truly!?"

"Would I lie about this?" Raven asked, allowing herself a small, but fond smile for the only other female Titan. "It'll be Girltime."

Starfire laughed happily and clapped, rushing to undress from her gym clothes and shower. Raven looked away from her with a blush, as Starfire had never fully understood the idea of modesty.

The other Titans had learned long ago that Tamaran had very different customs when it came to clothing and the lack thereof, the closest word to "Naked" on Starfire's homeworld was "Unarmored" and the princess thought nothing of being unadorned around friends, though she had learned it made them uncomfortable and tried to humour their ideas of privacy when she could. The other Titans, for their part, had simply learned to accept that every so often she would forget that changing clothes was something humans did out of sight.

It was fortuitous, perhaps, that she shared a floor, and bathroom, with Robin.

Raven handed her a towel when she exited the gym shower and waited outside her room as the alien girl dressed for their shopping trip. Listening as Starfire babbled excitedly through the door about having "The Girltime" with Raven, something Kori had come to regard as a precious gift from the stoic spellcaster. As she listened, the empath could not help but bask in the overwhelming delight emanating from Starfire and feel a little guilty about how infrequently she indulged her one and only girl friend in the simple pleasure of time spent together.

Perhaps, as she was doing with Beast Boy, she could learn to adjust to the similar, yet vastly different, emotional spikes of "Girltime".

Starfire came bursting out of her room in a blackish blue sundress, floppy grey hat and mid-calf black boots, eliciting a surprised smile from Raven, for whom the colour scheme had not gone unappreciated by.

"How will we get to the city Friend Raven?" Kori asked, taking Raven's offered hand without hesitation, sinking through a swirl of Raven's energy. Starfire had never disliked teleporting, unlike her other, far more human, team mates. Raven took her communicator out and tapped a quick message to the boys, telling them not to panic when the two were missed.

"We'll take the Racer."

The Titans were well known for the vehicles they utilised, none more so than Cyborg's T-Car and Robin's motorbike, yet even Beast Boy's moped was a familiar sight. This meant that when they needed (or wanted) to go unremarked upon, a more clandestine mode of transport was required.

Enter the Racer, a somewhat ironically named mazda sedan with chipped red paint and windows tinted dark enough that all an observer would see from the outside is the vague outline of those within. It was older than any two Titans combined and took numerous key turns for the motor to turn over, the car was so singularly boring that most people barely noticed it's passing.

Raven loved it.

The girls slipped into the car and Raven drove them through a vortex of energy into a parking lot she knew would be relatively empty, since calling up the submerged bridge between Titan Island and Jump City would entirely defeat purpose of driving the Racer at all. Starfire directed her through the city to a small one way street that was filled with antique stores, thrift shops and a single clothing store named "Mystique Designs".

Parking on the street, Starfire led Raven into the clothes shop and excitedly showed her the myriad dresses of black, purple and dark blue that the store had to offer, most of which were a gothic style that appealed to Raven's more macabre sensibilities.

"This doesn't seem like the kind of shop you'd go to Star." She remarked, uncaring that the store attendant was close by and undoubtedly eaves dropping on the two. Dressed as they were, the Titans could pass as regular people at a glance, but in such a confined space it was hard not to notice Starfire's golden skin and green eyes or Raven's pale grey complexion.

"It is not, Friend Raven." Agreed Kori, who was sifting through a series of ball gown style items. "This is where I come to find you gifts."

The dress Raven had been holding shredded itself to pieces, and Raven gaped at the back of the princess's head as she continued browsing. The store attendant hurried over to clean up the tattered remains of the garment. "Sorry miss, it must have been moth eaten to just come apart in your hands like that." She said, fully aware that no such thing was the case.

"No no. I'll pay for it." Raven said, not wanting to get the poor girl in trouble. "Just add the cost to my bill when we're down please."

Frowning, the attendant gathered up the last of what had been a pretty dress and moved to the counter, where she started tapping furiously at the keyboard of her computer.

Starfire called from across the store. "I have found it Friend Raven!"

Raven came over to where Kori was admiring a mannequin, or more accurately, what the mannequin wore.

The gown was made of two materials, the first being a heavily stylised lace that left the back all but uncovered, it flowed in tendrils to expose the wearer's collar bones and ribs, forming a pattern that was not unlike the arms of a great, subnautic leviathan. The second material was silk and it hugged the figure of the mannequin snugly, a high collar and long sleeves giving the illusion of modesty, but the lace tendrils accentuated that which the silk hid and clung to. The dress fell just passed the mannequins knees, allowing for the full sight of whatever footwear one chose to accompany the dress.

Raven gulped quietly. "You don't think it's a little… Revealing?"

Starfire looked blankly at Raven, realisation lifting her eyebrows high after a moment as she comprehended what the sorceress was asking. "Oh!… I do not believe so. Does it not cover more than your uniform?"

She had the shorter girl there. Raven circled the dress and had to admit that it would look beautiful on her, lifting up the tag, she understood why it was on a mannequin and not the racks.

"It's so expensive…" She muttered, frowning slightly.

The Titans all had their own money, Cyborg's father made sure to send through enough for him to survive on, despite the distance his son had placed between them after the accident, Robin had access to the same source of seemingly limitless money that had paid for the Batcar and endless black capes his former team seemed to never be short of, Starfire regularly appeared on ads and as a model in fashion magazines, mostly for the entertainment of seeing herself on TV or in the magazines she read, but it also provided her with a decent income. Even Beast Boy, who rarely bought anything outside of comics and games, had let slip during a movie that he had appeared in a television series as a child and still received royalties from the show, as well as an allowance from the Doom Patrol (Or more specifically, Rita and Steve)

Raven however, had no family, nor enough personal celebrity to appear in advertisements. She received a monthly check from the Wayne Foundation for her assistance as an "Expert in the Occult" despite them never calling her, or her ever calling them. This paid for her uniforms and bedroom furniture as well as rare personal expenses like civilian clothes or items needed for her magic.

The dress, though stunning, was somewhat beyond the budget she had set herself.

Starfire watched as she set the tag down and frowned. "If you want the dress, then get it." She said, upset to see her friend so torn. "I will do the buying of it for you."

Raven shook her head. "I don't want you spending money on me Star, especially not on something I will in all likelihood only wear once."

Kori accepted that logic with a disgruntled huff, but did not push the subject. Much to both of their surprise, the store clerk (Who's name-tag read Vanessa) came over and began taking the dress from the mannequin, folding it carefully and placing it in a box.

"Has someone bought it?" Raven asked, only a hint of disappointment in her voice.

"No, the store owner has instructed me to give it away." The girl said matter-of-factly, presenting the garment to Raven. "He said Titans don't pay in his shop."

Raven took the box uncertainly, looking between it and Vanessa in wonderment. "But it costs so much?"

Vanessa shook her head. "It's nothing, not a damn thing, compared to what you've given us." She paused and took a pendant from her own neck, slipping it carefully onto Raven's. "Here, emerald is my birthstone, and green goes perfectly with that dress."

In something of a daze, Raven allowed Vanessa the store attendant to latch the necklace firmly in place. "Thank you." She said quietly, touching the gift. "Really. Thank you."

Vanessa smiled at her beatifically. "You've saved us from monsters, from invasions, from evil itself and from our own accidents. You've given us so much, we can spare to give back just a little."

Starfire pulled the girl into a hug, thanking her enthusiastically and asking for the business number so that the Titans could tell people where the dress had come from.

After they were done, Raven put her new dress into the Racer carefully and went with Star into a thrift store, followed by a curio shop, then a boutique where the staff almost cried over Starfire's golden hue and Raven's unblemished skin.

When they had been to all the stores Starfire was interested in they got back into the car and, on impulse, Raven headed towards the city centre, rather than towards the Tower.

"Friend Raven, are we not meant to be going home?" Kori asked curiously. "You have purchased a dress that is most splendid, was that not our goal?"

"No, well… Yes, but that wasn't the _only_ point." Raven said. "We're out here for **Girltime** , remember?"

Starfire squealed, clapping her hands quickly.

The sorceress took them to a cafe tucked in behind a bookstore that Raven trusted to be discreet. They were given a corner booth and ordered drinks as they looked over the menu.

"I haven't seen much of you lately, Raven." Kori lamented. "Though I have been spending more time with Robin, I had hoped we would not become the distant because of it."

Guilt riddled Raven's thoughts as she set down her tea. "It's not that Star, I've just been dealing with my own things lately. My emotions aren't stable at the moment, you know how I get."

Starfire nodded, sipping her special made lettuce and vinegar milkshake. "Is it because of Friend Beast Boy?"

A salt shaker fractured and broke apart at their table, but Raven was glad that was all that happened. "You… You know about Beast Boy."

"Well, we happen to eat at the same table and he is the hard to miss." Starfire quipped. "Since he happens to be green."

Raven sighed. "Kori, we both know you understood what I meant."

"Yes." The princess admitted. "I know about Beast Boy. You follow him with your eyes and when he laughs your chin lifts up, like you are trying to hear it better. He makes you smile more than the rest of us, and he can also makes you flee with a look."

Raven was uncomfortable beneath her gaze, a look of understanding that transcended species, crossed worlds and dimensions. Raven swallowed nervously.

"What about him?" The shorter girl deadpanned.

"He loves you." Starfire said flippantly, smiling as a waitress placed their food in front of them and pointedly avoided staring at either of the heroes. "He's always loved you."

Raven snorted, feeling her heartbeat calm as they moved passed her own feelings. "I doubt it."

Koriand'r, Princess of Tamaran, where emotions could be seen, felt and touched, levelled a look as serious as the grave upon her misinformed friend. "Garfield cares for you as Robin cares for me, he did so when Adonis tore through our home and he became a monster to protect you, when Trigon came to this world and he risked himself in every way to make you safe, and he does so still in the quiet moments when he thinks none are looking."

Raven put a chunk of her salad in her mouth to save herself from replying, giving nothing more in response than a non-committal hum.

Conversation turned to lighter matters, they spoke of the Gala and who they thought would be there, they talked about earthly customs and the things they considered ridiculous, as well as what they found fascinating. Raven spoke of the quiet on Azarath and how she found earth to be so noisy in comparison, whereas Starfire thought it too muted after the revelries and rages of Tamaran.

They spoke of family, how Starfire missed her own and how Raven regretted never having siblings that understood the problems of her demonic heritage.

"It is most wondrous then, that we have both found a sister here on earth." Starfire announced, smiling at Raven as she touched her hand. "Were it not for that, life would be doing much of the sucking, no?"

" _Sister_?" Raven whispered softly, vulnerably, she curled her fingers around the alien's own, and nodded. "Sister."

They found the Tower in disarray when they returned, clothes strewn everywhere as the boys rushed to get ready for an event that was hours away. Robin was dressed in an undone white shirt and formal pants, frantically asking for a delivery from the store that provided his hair gel, Cyborg turned over the couch searching for his holo ring and Beast Boy… Well Beast Boy was sitting at the table, calmly eating a bowl of soup.

"Hey guys, how was shopping?" He asked, raising an eyebrow as Cyborg began tearing through the kitchen cupboards. "Things have been pretty normal here, as you may have noticed."

Starfire flew to Robin and shot an apologetic smile at Raven as she steered the Boy Wonder from the room. Raven smiled back before calling to Cyborg. "I think I saw your ring in the gym Cy, near the mirrors."

"OF COURSE!" Shouted her gigantic friend, turning to sprint from the room. "Thanks Rae!"

That left two.

"You found something." Beast Boy stated, pointing at the box she clutched. "Can I see?"

"No." Raven smirked, already descending through the floor. "You can wait until tonight."


	11. Chapter 11

His father's suit fit perfectly, as he knew it would.

All black and white, a classic tuxedo that had seen it's fair share of ballrooms, dance floors and Serengeti plains, not necessarily in that order. Smoothing down the already impeccably ironed and starched jacket, Garfield was struck by a gratefulness for the man he had barely known.

When he had turned eighteen, the Bank of Greater Gauteng had contacted the Titan on the previous instruction of his late parents. The message they passed on to him had been short and simple, delivered in Marie Logan's dulcet Swahili.

"Happy Birthday Gar, Dad and I have been keeping this surprise from you for so long now, we may have forgotten it ourselves. You're a man now, and as a man you're entitled to a piece of the people who got you this far. Today, we will be taking you to Johannesburg and opening a long overdue present. Please forgive us for hiding this from you for so long. Happy Birthday my baby boy."

After what seemed like hours of shocked and tearful numbness, in which all Garfield remembered was finding himself curled in the corner of his room on the tail end of what he assumed was a major breakdown, the name "Galtry" still lingering like poison on his lips, the Titan had booked a flight to South Africa and taken leave from the Titans, for this was something he needed to deal with alone.

There he had found, after many agitated conversations in Afrikaans, a small, yet quite upper-class bank.

The clerk had turned white when Beast Boy said he had come for the Logan account, all but sprinting to find his manager, a Boer woman with incredibly striking blue eyes, despite her advanced years.

A hurried conversation had followed in which he assured her that yes, he was in fact Garfield Mark Logan, that no, he was not dead and/or captured by Somali human traffickers, that yes, he was always colored green. She had produced a key from her breast pocket and ushered him down a flight of stairs, into a basement several times larger than the atrium above and boasting more than a dozen massive vault doors, along with thousands of various sized lock-boxes set into the floor.

She had moved to one of the great doors and inserted her diminutive key, before clearing her throat in an official manner and asking in halting English, "What was your first language?"

"Kookaburra." Beast Boy said without hesitation. "Because I was always laughing back at them."

The manager had given a terse nod, and swung open the door.

His parents had left their son with personal things, among them a few of his father's clothes, their wedding photos, and (Most importantly to Garfield) hundreds of journals written by the couple during their escapades. All of which had found their way to the emerald young man as a belated gift from people who had not known they would never see it's effect on their son, nor that all other traces of their fortune had been taken from him.

It was from the journals that the changeling found some insight into the people his parents had been, beyond the documentaries and shallow interviews they had done during their lives. From their own words he found out that his father had loved the smell of sea salt, that his mother refused to drink coffee as it made her light headed, they had written of him and how they could already see the fine man he would become, of their travels, their plans and a myriad list of things he relished in reading.

It was in these journals that Mark Logan had confided his reason for stowing the tuxedo away in the vault marked "G. Logan" along with the items that he could not have known would be the last worldly possessions his son would have to remember him by.

"I want Garfield to have my prom suit." He had written, the ink so black he could have penned it moments before. "I know it's all superstition, but that tux was with me the night I finally got to hear Marie say she loved me, hopefully my boy can use some of that luck on his big night too."

So, with his father's lucky suit fitting perfectly, Garfield breathed deeply and strode out of his room, marching resolutely to the door of a certain purple haired enchantress.

She answered before he even raised a fist to knock, but if there had been an amused quip about eagerness on his emerald lips, it died a swift death as all thoughts, intelligent or otherwise, fled from the mind of the shapeshifter to be replaced with nothing but the image of her.

Pallid skin contrasted vividly with the midnight black of her gown, the silk shimmering slightly beneath the fluorescent lights of the hallway and the lace offering chaste, yet scintillating glimpses of the skin beneath it. An emerald, glinting in the light, offered a splash of colour to the outfit that seemed only to emphasise the shadowy folds of the dress and the ashen body they clung to. Her lilac hair pinned in a loose bun atop her head, allowing wisps of hair to fall either side of her face, framing it as Starfire had said they would.

Raven, feeling the sudden and complete blankness of her secret escort's mind, mistook it for boredom and frowned ever so slightly in disappointment, the movement drawing Garfield's blazing evergreen eyes to her amethyst irises, and all at once, the strength of his lean muscles, of his hard life and rigid training, failed the super-powered young man as it became so very evident, that he was also just a love struck fool.

He fell to his knees as they buckled before the radiance of her, a whisper half noticed slipping from between gasping lips. "Jetez-moi à part, car je suis indigne…"

Raven looked around furtively, leaning down to help her team mate stand back up. "Beast Boy, stop acting so weird, if the others saw this…"

Garfield snapped from his stupor with a bleary shake of his head and stood up, laughing off the sudden outburst. "Sorry Rae, you just took me by surprise. That's… That's certainly one hell of a dress, you look amazing!"

Smiling slightly at the praise, the sorceress twirled a lazy circle in the air, levitating so that she needn't maneuver in the strappy heels Starfire had insisted she buy after passing them on the way back from their cafe lunch. As she turned, the all but transparent back of the dress threatened to put him right back down on the floor, but he maintained enough composure to remain upright and smiling as she completed her turn, shaking his head in wonder. "I was wrong, so absolutely and all encompassingly wrong. You don't look amazing, you look beautiful."

A slight blush crept across Raven's cheeks, she pushed him gently to diffuse to the tension. "You don't look half bad yourself, where did you find a tux? I thought Robin was the only one on the team who wore them?"

"It's a lucky tux." Beast Boy smirked. "I was saving it for a special occasion, and if seeing you in a dress, let alone _that_ dress, isn't special, then I am at a loss for the state of this world."

Beast Boy held out his arm and gestured to the elevator. "Your carriage awaits my lady."

Rolling her eyes, the spellcaster slipped her arm through his as she had seen countless women do in those b-grade spanish soap operas Robin watched with Starfire when it was late in the day and there was no emergency in sight.

The elevator doors slid shut and they waited until the very last moment to unlink their arms, stepping into the garage and finding Cyborg, his holo-ring projecting a dashing suit and tie combo onto his form, already in the car, window wound down so he could shout at them. "Come ON guys! Star and Rob are already on their way and we have to pick up Sarah before we get there!"

Cyborg frowned when Beast Boy opened the door for Raven, but his anxiety to pick up his date ruled out any speculation for the moment. The door closed, the garage opened and as only the T-Car could do, they flew from Titan Island across the rapidly raising bridge.

Sarah had greeted them quickly as she stepped into the T-Car, complimenting Raven on how pretty she looked and admitting that Beast Boy could bring the A game when it suited him,but afterwards she only had eyes for Cyborg, laughing at his jokes and nodding along with his stories. Raven did not begrudge her that though, for Cyborg and his long time girlfriend found little time to spend with one another between Titan alerts, university courses, Cy's charity work and Sarah's part-time job as a bartender. The two took every opportunity to reconnect and the gala provided a welcomed middle ground between their respective worlds.

"So, Beast Boy, have you found anyone you're interested in?" Sarah glanced back at her boyfriend's best-friend.

"Ahhh, you know me, always a bridesmaid." Beast Boy chortled. "Honestly, I'm not doing any better than Raven is in the whole dating scene."

Raven, due entirely to Cyborg's erratic driving and tight swerves, landed an elbow in the changeling's ribs that elicited a startled "Oomphf" from him.

"Well, if you don't mind blind dates, there's a girl in vet school at my college that would love to meet you." Sarah told him affably, either not noticing or dismissing Cyborg's frantic head shaking. "She saw you in action against Mammoth and never really got over how cool you looked changing from a T-Rex to a rhino so fluidly."

"Oh!" Garfield squeaked, peeking at Raven from the corner of his eye. "I'm kind of... in a bad place to be going on blind dates at the moment, all this emotional distance and poor people skills y'know, sometimes I just feel like shutting myself off from the world. Not really a fun date prospect."

"Yeah, I understand, just keep it in mind okay?" The peppy blond acknowledged, smiling back at him in time to catch Raven glaring at him incredulously. "Is everything okay back here?"

"Peachy." Raven reassured her, the familiar monotone easing Sarah's concern and letting the other woman go back to telling Cyborg about her midterm being due next Wednesday despite her having to actually start the paper.

Thankfully, the Jump City Functions Hall came into view well before Raven could exploit Sarah's shift in attention to exact retribution on her covert companion.

They stepped from the T-Car to the flashing of paparazzi cameras, something that annoyed Raven and Cyborg for wholly different reasons.

So far, Cyborg had managed to keep Sarah from entering the spotlight of Jump City's gossip mill, using his holo-ring to disguise his robotic parts while they were in public, taking her to remote and discreet date locations, just generally trying to shield her from the well meaning but zealous reporters and pop journalists that thrived on information such as who one of the original Titans was involved with.

Sarah, for her part, didn't seem to mind all that much, waving in a friendly manner to the reporters and letting Cyborg steer her quickly up the carpet into the, relatively, reporter free interior of the Hall.

Raven, however, allowed a brief flash of annoyance to flicker through her, focusing on the cameras and trying not to smile as all of them flashed with dark energy, loosing their films, memory cards and tapes.

An anguished groan rippled through the crowd, but they resignedly took out notepads and pens. This was not the first Raven-fueled mass camera malfunction, and certainly none of them bemoaned her desire for privacy, but they had _jobs_ to do damn it.

Beast Boy laughed easily and offered to comment on whatever questions they gave him, by way of apologising for their lost footage of the event, Raven huffed in annoyance but waited patiently by the entryway for him. Several tape recorders came out and what seemed to be an age later, Beast Boy concluded his questioning session and caught up with her, moving almost shoulder to shoulder through the door.

Inside was an array of people that were both familiar and foreign to the two Titans.

Bankers, attorneys, judges, high society people, aristocrats and CEOs milled all through the Hall, interspersed here and there by government reps and occasionally one of their team mates.

The Hall was a great steel and glass affair, windows above opened to admit a slight early autumn breeze and the hanging chandelier alight with the glinting luminescence it had provided for decades.

Robin was talking avidly with several businessmen, Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen key among them. Starfire wasn't by his side as they had expected, but was instead dancing with a group of children that they could only assume belonged to several of the smiling socialites that stood nearby.

Cyborg and Sarah were already mingling with the regional head of STAR Labs and a bald man that made Beast Boy feel like curling up and whining in distress.

He did not, instead an impish grin curled his lips as he nodded towards a group of what appeared to be college professors, making Raven click her tongue in annoyance, but she shrugged and drifted along with him to the scholarly gentlemen.

"Well, if it isn't the Mark Twain appreciation corner!" Garfield greeted them warmly, earning a surprised glance from his apathetic companion. "What's turning heads over here gentlemen? Is it the speed of an unladen european swallow? Or the migration habits of coconuts?"

Several of them chuckled, again surprising Raven, the changeling pressed his advantage. "This is my friend and team mate, Raven, though men as learned as yourselves would know that already! Honestly, we should be hearing your names, why don't we start with Captain Kirk's better looking younger brother over here?"

After they had exchanged pleasantries and Beast Boy continued to make references to things she barely recognized, Garfield had pulled his communicator from his jacket pocket and feigned surprise, glancing over at her. "Seems Robin wants us to meet some boring athletic types, better do it." He had said resignedly, leaving amid a cacophony of well wishes and invitations to Star Wars viewings.

"What was that?" Raven said in hushed tones once they were out of earshot. "As far as I could tell you might as well have been speaking in tongues back there, but whatever you said made them really excited."

"Well, basically everyone that commits so hard to the nerd personae that they OWN it, is going to know Monty Python." He chuckled, taking an apple from a nearby table and biting into it. "I just ran without whatever stuck."

"Amazing." She murmured. "You've managed to become some kind of nerd pied piper, an alpha geek."

"How dare you insult my people like that." Beast Boy retorted lightly. "We connect on a deeper level than you muggles, you're just jealous."

"You realize that I've read the Harry Potter books?" The sorceress said drily. "I know what a muggle is."

Beast Boy was staring past her, a line of doors marked "Conference" sparking an idea. "In, like, ten minutes, do you think you could phase through that middle door unnoticed?"

Raven glanced at it and shrugged. "Probably, but why-"

Beast Boy was already gone, mingling with the crowd once more.

Slipping into the room had been easy, leaning against the door and waiting for an opportunity to slide through was a simple game of patience, since even the most doggedly dedicated of fans would grow bored with a girl stood still, leaning against the wall.

Within the room she found a long, business table that was probably used by members of the public or visiting politicians. It was stained a dark oak and though it was large, the size didn't make the room seem smaller by comparison.

She didn't hear when he approached, only registering the familiar arms sliding around her waist. "Gotcha." The changeling announced quietly, speaking into her neck as his lips traced the curve of it, following the line of her jaw, going ever closer to her lips…

A chair shattered beside them and overhead, the light went out.

This didn't bother Beast Boy overly, his eyes glinting cheekily in the dark. "Bingo."

She slapped him lightly on the arm, turning to face the mischievous green boy, but not breaking free of his arms. "You were trying to do that!"

"Guilty as charged." Garfield grinned, the bar of light that gleamed from underneath the door illuminating his fanged smile. "But you weren't exactly Miss Pure just now."

"What if someone heard?" She whispered, finally moving back a little. "They might come looking."

"Well, I suppose the only option left to a magical, teleporting, phase-shifting girl and her shape shifting, instinctively sneaky secret date will be to come clean about our sordid relationship."

"...Okay, no need to be a jerk."

They had slipped from that room, separately of course, to mix back into the crowds of rich and influential people, only for another whispered conversation in passing to result in a quiet and brief, but passionate rendezvous in the conference room. Each time, Beast Boy swore he saw a peace of that wall Raven kept between herself and everyone else disappear.

What he did not see, was the chandelier above, already weakened by it's years of suspended vigil, drop a single, shaky, inch.

Just a little, and only a fraction each time, but it was happening, and she would smile fuller at casual remarks, frown with actual sadness when someone confessed heartbreak and best of all, laugh that small, Raven laugh that set him soaring better than any actual wings could ever achieve.

The chandelier shuddered, swaying in the breeze of open windows and popping, ever so faintly as another screw shattered.

The it came time for the dancing.

The DJ put on slow songs and each Titan took to the floor with a partner from the crowd. Starfire had picked up one of the children, a boy named Declan, and twirled with him ten feet above the dance floor. Robin had taken the hand of Oliver Queen's wife, Dinah, much to the millionaires amusement. Cyborg and Sarah came next of course, they moved without effort around one another as only those familiar with their partner in every way can do, Beast Boy took to the floor with one of the handsomer college professors, and they spoke heatedly about whether Firefly would be renewed while flowing easily through an oxford waltz, Beast Boy leading. Raven took a woman named Lois onto the floor and learned she was a reporter visiting from Metropolis, though she didn't hold that against her and even allowed her to lead.

As the song changed the other guests took to the floor and began dancing with one another and the Titans, Starfire floating gently back down to allow Declan a reprieve and give some of the adults a chance to twirl with her.

Raven paid little attention to her partners, only really focusing on them if she needed to issue a warning about hand placement or answer a direct question. In the chaos of it all, she barely noticed when a green hand slipped into her own.

"All we're missing is someone announcing us as Prom King and Queen." Beast Boy snickered, spinning her under his arm gracefully. "Then the whole night will have been just like a dream come true."

"Where did you learn to dance?" Was all Raven managed in reply, her breath coming shorter now that Beast Boy was holding her so close in plain sight.

"Rita taught me, she wanted to know that I could at least dance at my wedding some day." Beast Boy almost lost his footing when he caught her expression. "Not that I'm thinking about that!"

Relaxing somewhat, Raven spun with her confidential paramour, letting herself be lost in the moment for just a second, and picturing what it would be like, to let the dance go on forever.

Above them, the last weight bearing screw came loose.

There were several aspects of luck involved with the chandelier in those sparingly few seconds. The first being that Sarah was alone beneath the great work of crystal and iron as Cyborg was fetching her a drink, that was Bad Luck. The second was that from her vantage point on high, Starfire had seen the chandelier begin it's descent and launched incredibly fast, towards the lone girl, that was Good Luck.

Now, the third point is contentious, because as Raven opened her eyes from the embrace of a certain emerald superhero, she caught sight of the chandelier smashing into the ground where Sarah had stood mere moments ago, she saw the lingering black energy of her power twisting where screws once were and she knew in that moment what she had let happen through her carelessness. Black energy enveloped chandelier before it shattered, containing the damage and making sure no one was hit with a shard of glass or flying metal. That was Luck, in it's twisted, ugly truth.

Raven broke from the dance, as many others did in the wake of the crash, but unlike the others she did not gawk at the damage. Her dress rippled like an ink black wraith, her heels betting a fast paced retreat from the crowd, from him. She should have known he wasn't so easy to escape.

Out on the street, reporters clambered to be near her, but all she wanted was space. There was no way she could levitate in her state of mind and teleportation was even riskier. As they crowded her and option became sparse, the only voice she wished would not intervene cut through the paparazzi frenzy.

"Hey! Leave her alone guys, she needs to be alone right now." Beast Boy barked at them, moving to put his hands on her shoulders reassuringly, but lowering them when she flinched away.

"Alone." She hissed, gripping her elbows. "I need to be alone."

"Okay, okay, let's go into the alley over there." Beast Boy said, motioning to a side street that Raven lunged for, almost running to get away from the light and noise of the Hall.

Enveloped in the shadows of the alley, Raven tried her breathing exercises and repeated her words. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos" Over and over she said them until her breathing calmed and the emotions she had stupidly let run free reigned themselves in.

She sighed. "Didn't you hear me, Garfield? I need to be alone."

The changeling stirred from his crouched position beside her. "Of course I did, that's why we're in the alley, I didn't think you meant me though."

"No." Raven murmured. "I didn't mean just for a moment. I meant it for eternity. You saw what happened in there, if Kori hadn't- I almost killed Sarah!"  
"You didn't though, and Star did save her." Beast Boy reasoned, holding his hands in front of him as though he was trying to soothe a wounded animal. "It wasn't your fault Rae, you didn't know."

"You're wrong." Raven deadpanned, and in that moment, Garfield watched every brick he had taken from that wall around her snap right back into place. "I've always known what the consequences are. Emotions lead to pain, either mine, or someone else's. I can't… For everyone's sake, I need to be **alone**."

Having calmed herself to the point of power use, Raven began to sink into the ground, her face impassive and blank as the monotone that in the moment, he hated, echoed in his ears.

"Bye, Gar."


	12. Chapter 12

There were few times that Garfield felt truly alone.

Not just in the absence of other people, but the true detachment of oneself from the rest of humanity. The feeling that even when you are in a crowded room, you may as well have been stood on an island surrounded by nothing but crashing waves and the great expanse of blank space that is the ocean.

Beast Boy felt this as he walked to Robin, taking no notice of those that greeted him or quickly stepped from his path. As he was, numb from the ordeal of watching the woman he adored tear herself apart over an accident, then the heart wrenching ache that her stone faced words had inflicted, he would not have noticed if they had been screaming at him.

The boy wonder frowned at the vacant eyes of his ever expressive friend. "Beast Boy? What's wrong?"

"Raven's gone." The changeling croaked. "She got too stressed and had to leave, I think... I think I have to go as well Rob."

A flicker of anxiety passed behind Dick's mask before his poker face settled back on. "Yeah, yeah sure. Do you want me to ask Cyborg to drive you back?"

"Nah man, I want to fly." Garfield said, already turning. "And I don't want to interrupt him and Sarah, she must be pretty shaken up."

The doors were open and he could see the sky, feel it's openness calling to him and in a moment of sudden claustrophobia, he leaped for it.

Skin tightening and stretching, bones rearranging and hollowing, his lips hardening into a beak and feathers exploding from his pores. Young man into a peregrine falcon, a mere heartbeat between the two forms.

He swept over the heads of party goers and out into the night, hearing the oohs and ahhs but uncaring for their attention. All he wanted to hear was the rush of wind in his ears, all he wanted to feel was the caress of night air on his feathers and the serenity of succumbing to that base desire in all wild things.

He wanted to soar free.

The others had their own forms of meditation, for Robin it was his training, Cyborg had the endless mechanical work he found to do on the T-Car, Starfire had her playtime with Silkie and Raven stayed true to traditional methods.

Beast Boy found that peace in two things, video games (duh) and the simplicity of his instincts.

Surrendering the thoughts and emotions of his human mind to the urges of a more focused form. A wolf knows nothing about the stress of crime rate reports or the critical judgements of the Justice League. A wolf knows to hunt, to find shelter, to run.

Just as a falcon knows nothing of a sorceress sacrificing a barely flowering relationship for the safety of others. A falcon knows the instincts that drives it, the instinct to nest, to scan the ground for small prey, to fly.

So he flew and allowed all else to drop away.

When he landed on the roof, some hours later, Raven wasn't there.

It was for the best, he told himself, as there were some hard truths that he had confronted when those all so human thoughts found their way past his desire to swoop at mice in a field.

There were two begrudging conclusions he had come to, the first being that Raven needed time to process what had happened, and the second was that she had been right to place the blame for what happened on their actions.

Neither of them had wanted to hurt someone, but the fact remained that Sarah had come so very close to losing her life that night, because of how Garfield had pushed the boundaries of Raven's control.

So, he didn't knock on her door that night, he didn't hold a boombox playing her favorite music beneath her window, he didn't try to slip a poem under her door.

He went to his room, he curled into a ball, and when the best and worst memories of that night stopped playing tug of war with his heartstrings, he fell asleep.

Beast Boy, though blessed with deep slumber, rarely enjoyed the dreams that this quirk brings him. There are the nights he remembers the boat accident that claimed his parents life, the nights Trigon comes to try and steal away all that the Titans had saved from him, the nights where animals chase him and jeer in his own voice about how he is little more than a mascot for the Titans, useless.

Given this common vein, it was surprising for Garfield when he found himself on a floating rock in Nevermore.

He didn't really mind the change of atmosphere of course, nor the nagging certainty that this place wasn't strictly speaking in his own head. He felt comfortable in this corner of Raven's mind, as though he belonged.

He turned a lazy circle and found Raven behind him, but it wasn't Raven at all.

She wore the face of Raven, but her head was clean shaven and all this Raven wore was the leotard of the true sorceress's uniform, no cloak, no belt, no boots. There was also, the matter of her four red eyes.

"I… I know you." Beast Boy frowned, for he realized it was the truth. "Which emotion are you?"

"I am no emotion, Child of Darwin." The clone told him, her voice was sonorous and in it he heard the crackle of flames, the frigid touch of snow. "You and I are made of the same thing, your other selves howl and hunt and mate because of me."

"Darwin? My father's name was Mark." The shapeshifter told her, uncaring of revealing his secrets, for this was Raven, or at least a fragment of her. "And if you're not an emotion, why are you here?"

"You are not Darwin's child by blood, Shapechanger, you are his child by choice. You adhere to his Law and walk on his path." The Not-Raven supplied, moving to circle the dreaming Titan.

Garfield growled low in his throat at the motion, slinking low to the ground and turning to keep her in front of him. "Darwin's Law? You mean like... survival of the fittest? Adaptation?"

"Yes, you change. You always have. In the beginning you were just a boy, then you changed to a friend, then to family, now you are changing once more." Barefoot, the unadorned Raven-clone padded around Beast Boy, watching in approval as he continued to keep her from getting behind him. "You change for us, for her. Whatever we need, you remake yourself to become that which we yearn for."

"Okay, so you're a facet of Raven that isn't an emotion, one that I have as well. What do you want? Are you like Happy? Do you want me to make Raven laugh?" Beast Boy pondered.

"I don't want anything." Bald Raven stated. "I _need_. I am what drives Raven to eat and sleep and fight. I am what drives her to the roof for sunlight and to the Titans for warmth. I am not greed, for I take what is needed and no more, I am not timid for I will fight when cornered, nor am I anger for I will flee if need be."

Garfield nodded, understanding making his stance loosen. "Basic needs, human contact, fight when you have to, run when you must. You're Raven's primal desires, her instincts."

Instinct growled with approval, her red eyes softer than those of Anger. "That's right, you know me as well as your own voice. You and your instincts are one and the same, but Raven tries to keep herself apart from me, in fear of her demonic heritage. I am no emotion however, I cannot be tamed as they have been."

"Tamed?" Beast Boy laughed, shaking his head. "She hasn't tamed her emotions, she's just better with them now."

"Is she?" Raven's primal self tilted her head. "She meditates to calm herself, to feel without feeling, tethering her emotions so that they may only roam as free as their chain allows. She is doing so right now, trying to beat down her anger, her happiness and her fear. All of this she is doing so that she may make the greatest mistake of our life."

"What do you mean?" Came his anxious response.

"From her birth to now I have kept her alive. I have made her seek nourishment, pushed her to fight in spite of her pacifistic upbringing, I have made sure that her needs were met. That meant bringing her to _you_ as well." Instinct eyed him knowingly. "I do not seek trivial things. Raven's life, death and well-being are all I concern myself with, and you have become my concern."

Beast Boy tried to mirror her movements, shifting to the side as she went to walk around and feinting in the other direction when she changed paths, keeping her in the same spot. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because we need you to stop her. She wants to break the bond between us, so that her powers are kept in check. She doesn't realize that to try this would kill her, and I do not deal in metaphor. The emotional discord that cutting herself from you would bring will destroy far more than a pretty little chandelier." Instinct hissed. "She won't listen to me, so now I am appealing to you."

"What do you want me to do? She's made it pretty clear where we stand." Garfield fumed.

"Then change where you stand." The far more demonic version of Raven instructed. "She needs to see reason, and right now none of the others can show it to her. You've changed before, now do it again."

"This isn't some bottom of the ninth, in the clutch kind of deal you know." Beast Boy retorted. "I'm not Hugh Grant and she isn't Drew Barrymore, it's not like I can go to her door, say some cliché speech about the power of love and fix all this. We almost killed someone, she thinks being with me is the same as murder."

"Being without you is _worse_." Instinct spat. "And she doesn't need poetry, she needs comfort, company. Just be with her, so that she knows what it is she will lose."

"You think that by just being close to her I can change her mind? That easy?" Garfield asked skeptically.

"Oh, it's never easy Child of Darwin." Instinct purred. "Don't you know that life is pain?"

He awoke to the sounds of the other Titans returning home, his alarm clock read 1am and a toneless voice repeated itself over and over in the room down the hall as quietly as it could, lest he hear her no doubt.

His encounter with Instinct did not slip from his mind as the other dreams he had so often did, there was a quality to it that rang true as a memory, not some imagined scenario his brain cooked up to fill the space between his eyes closing and their opening.

Rolling from the bed and landing on his feet, he paced the room, once again cursing how small it felt when he walked it's length.

Lurching to the door in a sudden rush, Garfield careened into the hallway and found himself in front of _her_ door, his hands twitched and his breath was heavy. What was he going to say?

 _"Hey Raven, I just had a conversation with the animalistic part of your mind and it thought we should have a chat."_

He snorted lightly and beyond the door he was glaring at, the whispered chanting ceased.

She knew he was there, and he knew that she knew he was there, and she knew that he knew that she knew he was there.

He raised a fist and gave the steel door a single rap.

Silence met his unneeded announcement of arrival, but she had not vacated the room. So attuned was he to the small noises of her being that the muted breathing, the whispered rasp of cloak against skin, the heartbeat that he could only just make out amidst the ambiance of the Tower all told him that Raven was so very close, yet in her silence so very far away.

"Rae… I can help." He said to the door. "We can talk about what we did wrong, we can make sure that next time it's different."

"There won't be a next time." She murmured, footsteps taking her further from the door. "I can't be with you, I'm dangerous."

"Raven. We're all dangerous." The changeling said. "Starfire can tear a man in two with her hands that shoot lasers, Cyborg could crush a person's skull underfoot, Robin spent most of his life learning how to break bones and use weapons sharper than any knife you'll find in a kitchen. I'm every animal the nature channel warns you about, my fingers have razors at their tips, my fangs can cut through flesh like it's butter, my senses allow no secret conversations and that's without _shifting_!" Beast Boy cried. "Every one of us in this Tower has to work at keeping the people around us safe from who we are. Let me help you figure this out, I'll even stay out here if it'll help you."

"Will you _leave_?" She muttered, the mattress of her bed complaining as she sat on it's edge.

"And then what Raven? We go back to being friends? You avoid my eyes at the dinner table? Leave when I walk into a room? Your powers barely held together when you thought we were just friends, what do you think they'll do now that you know we can be more?"

"I could leave the Titans." The sorceress mused. "Move away, somewhere that no one will be hurt."

"I'll be hurt Rae." Garfield croaked. "And wherever you go, you won't be _happy_ , not without your friends."

The spellcaster went quiet, and Beast Boy lent his arm against the door that separated them. "If we tell the others, come clean about what's happening between us, they can help too. Kori can help you deal with your emotions, Rob can give us rules and make sure we don't step over the line outside of the Tower, Cy… I'll let Cy make me a shock collar, if that's what it takes to reassure you. Anything Rae."

The door flew open, making Garfield stumble as the support for his arm disappeared. Beyond it Raven was furious. "Take it back."

"Take what back? I _will_ do anything." Beast Boy insisted.

"No, the collar. I don't want you to say that again Garfield, you panicked whenever your shirt touched your neck after Soto kidnapped you, I could feel the emotional scars it left behind for _months_. Promise me you won't wear another collar." She grabbed his shoulder, grip so tight that it almost hurt. " **Promise**."

"Fine! Fine, I'll promise, but you have to stop this talk of being alone Rae. It won't help anyone, and you leaving would hurt me more than any collar ever could." Elfin ear drooping, the shapeshifter stepped closer to the young woman, almost standing toe to toe with her. Stooping slightly his emerald gaze pinned her where she stood. "We _need_ each other, and even if you won't say it, you know it's the truth."

"I can't be a monster again Gar." Raven all but whimpered, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "And being around you means I could hurt people. I could hurt _you_."

"I can take it." Garfield assured her. "And you were never a monster, not even close. If being around me is so scary, then I'll stay away."

He moved away, but Raven grasped the front of his shirt and tugged him back, frowning up into his inquisitive eyes. "I don't want you to, that's the problem. If you go, I'll fall apart and so will the Tower, but if you stay… I don't know, I just don't know what will happen. I've meditated and cried and read everything I own about how to deal with this, but it's all been worthless. There's never been anything like us, and that uncertainty… I'm terrified of it Gar."

"I know." Beast Boy sighed, enveloping her in his arms and drawing her close. "It scares me too."

"You're scared of what my powers might do?" She asked, vulnerability weakening her voice as he had never heard before.

"No, I'm scared of waking up one morning, twenty years from now, to find myself alone, having ruined what we have in a moment of poor self-control. So I'll make a deal with you, okay?"

"What kind of deal?"

"I'll ask, before I do anything that might overwhelm you, I'll give you warning so that you can be prepared, or tell me to stop." He pulled back so that he could see her face. "No more surprises, no more uncertainty."

Raven looked away. "What if you're not the problem?"

"I'm always the problem." Beast Boy said confidently. "But if my plan doesn't work, we'll see why and work it out, like any other couple."

Raven breathed in sharply at that, but allowed herself a small smile and a sideways glance at the green skinned hero. "So we're a couple now?"

Garfield smiled at her and lent down, pausing before his lips touched hers. "I'm going to kiss you." He whispered.

She let him.


	13. Chapter 13

...

A/N: Hey dudes, dudettes and non-dudeish folk. As you may have noticed I'm getting a little slack with the update schedule. Have no fear, this metaphorical ball will keep on rolling, it just might be slower from here on out. It won't be unusual for a few weeks to go by before another update, so please be patient with me. I may as well give a few acknowledgements while I'm here. RPGPersona you're probably the sole reason this train is still on rails at all, I appreciate all reviews equally, but I don't consider this story truly updated until one of your comments appears on it. SamyJo your input was great and along with Artemis Raven Courtney you spurred me on to that pivotal 10th chapter. HunterMoore your comment was short and to the point, but I found it brilliantly uplifting. Thtgrlwthsox, hope you feel a bit better while reading this. Thank you all for the messages and I'll see you again in the Author's Notes somewhere along the line.

...

Garfield had fallen asleep beside her.

It was not something that either had planned on, but somewhere in the night talking had become whispers, which became murmuring and that in turn, had shifted into slumber.

Raven was the first of the pair to rise, as she always was. Finding the changeling in her bed was nothing thrilling, as there were few nights over the last week they had spent outside of one another's company. If anything waking up to find Beast Boy curled up at the edge of her bed was almost… Soothing.

His even breaths and half muttered words were familiar to her, even if the language he spoke was beyond her knowledge.

Raven slipped from the bed, gathering her daily clothing and elf boots, floating across the hall to their shared bathroom. As she prepared for the coming day, the sorceress considered her options as Garfield had laid them out to her the night before.

There was the idea that they keep finding one another in secret, hushed words and stolen glances all that constituted their romance until the night, were they fell asleep in one another's embrace.

This wasn't really an option to Raven, considering the damage she had wrought after only a few days of such a relationship. The tension and constant stress of wondering how quick their team mates would be to notice the change in their behavior was unbearable.

Having their relationship in the open however, was just as abhorrent to Raven. The very idea of media cameras seeking a shot of the couple together made the young woman shudder, for she had witnessed how the paparazzi had reacted to Starfire and Robin's relationship. The two could hardly find a moment of peace whilst in the public eye.

Attention was the last thing Raven needed.

And so, she must find a middle ground, a neutral place in what was essentially one of the most emotional experiences of her life.

Smirking at the dramatic tone of that thought, Raven drifted from the bathroom up through the ceiling towards the common area.

Moving as a specter, she fetched her tea pot, brought it to boil and made a calming herbal tea mixture, using the infuser that Robin had gifted her for Christmas last year. Tea in hand she settled at the table, floating her half forgotten novel over from the lounge and turning to the last place she recalled leaving the heroine and her skeletal companion.

Robin's emotions sharpened not a moment later, zipping from one corner of his room to the other before finally marching to the elevator and ascending to their shared living space. As always his confidence and pride shone through, giving way to curiosity only after he had nodded silently to his cloaked friend, set down both his coffee and newspaper on the table and parked himself before them. Gotham had run dry of good news it appeared, a picture of the Penguin plastered over the cover along with the title "Rogues Regroup For Record Crime Spree".

Starfire's jubilant attitude shot through the empath some time later as her alien best friend surfaced from whatever strange, chaotic dreams grasped her in the night. Raven tapped the table, eliciting a second, amused nod from her leader.  
"Happy morning my friends!" The princess beamed, shooting across the room to embrace an incredibly startled Raven. Carrying the smaller girl high above the table, Koriand'r only released her once they were past the hearing of Robin who had glanced at the kidnapping with mild interest before returning to his papers. "Friend Raven, I am sorry you were so unhappy with last night's going of the ons. I was most distracted by the children and did not realize you felt so uncomfortable."

"Kori, it's _fine_. I was dealing with personal issues, it had nothing to do with… Well, it had **little** to with the gala." Raven reassured her golden friend, levitating from her grip so that the two might speak in hushed tones inches from the common room ceiling. "I'm… I'm going to tell the team something today Kori, and it's going to be big. I'd like if you were on my side, when everything comes out."

"Friend Raven," Starfire frowned, touching the empath's shoulder only briefly. "I shall _always_ be on your side."

When Cyborg arose and waltzed into the common room, Starfire and Raven had retaken their seats on the ground, though this fact was short lived, for Sarah emerged from the doorway behind their electronic brother in arms, eliciting an excited squeal from Koriand'r, who rushed across the room once more to hug the blonde college goer. "Sarah! I thought you went home after the chandelier fell?"

Raven's control slipped, just a fraction, when Sarah smiled over Starfire's shoulder at the sorceress, who had missed her emotions in the overwhelming onslaught of Cyborgs own feelings. In the kitchen, several draws flew from their rollers and unloaded the contents within them across the floor. Standing hurriedly, Raven returned Sarah's smile though her own was more apologetic than the college girl's.

"Sorry Sarah, I'm just not used to breaks in routine." The spellcaster lied, gathering up utensils and cooking implements, pausing only slightly when Sarah's tanned hands joined her own as they sought out the scattered kitchenware.

"No no, I really should have warned you." Sarah laughed. "I know it's hard to keep your powers in check when you're surprised, don't worry about it."

Feeling all of three inches tall, Raven nodded mutely and returned to the table, feeling Starfire and Robin's eyes on her every step of the way.

Cyborg joined Sarah in the kitchen and began preparing breakfast, slipping into the easy rhythm that each morning in the Tower flowed on, in the half-robotic Titan's eyes this time around there was simply one more person.

As eggs and bacon hit the pan, that sizzle and pop of oil and fat caused the last Titan to rise. Reluctance emanated from Raven's room, followed by confusion and a slight sense of loss. He had found her missing from the bed.

Panic enveloped his being for a split second before he regained composure, relief flickering through him only to be replaced by amusement a moment later.

There.

Another unexplainable feeling exploded from the changeling. It was pride and envy and hunger all at once. It was a lion overlooking his Pride or a wolf stood before the Pack in the heartbeats before a hunt.

Raven latched onto the emotion and steadied herself with it, anchored her being to the familiar strangeness of Garfield's aura. As he awoke and slunk from her room to his own, Raven caught herself following the young man with her empathy and quickly recoiled mentally.

Frowning, she watched the elevator doors dutifully as Sarah passed Cyborg a plate of tofu.

" **MURDERER**! Hey Sarah. _SLAYER OF THE INNOCENT_!" Beast Boy roared, bursting from the lift with pointed finger and indignant tone.

"That's a bit harsh." Cyborg muttered, giving his girlfriend the salt shaker tamely.

Garfield deflated slightly, bewilderment practically exploding from his demeanor. " _What_? No yelling back? No snippy comment about flavor over ethics?"

"Come on B-Man, I think we're both a little too mature for all that." Cyborg chuckled, sprinkling pepper into a pot of mashed potatoes.

The changeling tilted his head back and squinted suspiciously at his metallic friend, comprehension lightening his features as those emerald eyes flickered between Cyborg and Sarah. With a half sighed "Okay" the shapeshifter took his seat beside Raven and awaited the coming meal.

"What were you feeling, before getting changed?" Raven asked, pleased to see that for once it was Garfield taken by surprise.

His gaze skimmed every face in the room, making sure no one was paying attention to the duo. "I was just, you know, getting a hold of my senses. Hearing you guys speaking up here and moving around."

"You were listening to us?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, but it's like… I know you're all HERE right? I can feel you around me, with me. I didn't wake up to find the Tower empty."

"Why would the Tower be empty?" Raven frowned. "We live here."

"That's no comfort." Garfield muttered. "People leave."

Cyborg began slapping plates laden with food in front of them, saving Beast Boy from Raven's questioning, though her eyes still sought his own out in the ensuing rush for people to stack their plates high.

As everyone finished organizing their meal and prepared to eat, Raven took a single, decisive breath.

"Garfield and I are together."

The Garfield in question almost cried out mid-swallow, causing himself to devolve into a heaving, coughing mess. Cyborg frowned over the table at Raven, a quiet "Couple of what?" before his lips formed a perfect circle and his single eyebrow strained to reach the ceiling. Sarah clapped her hands to her mouth and Robin looked forlornly at the first scoop of food on his fork before sighing and placing it back on his plate.

Starfire, caught in the middle of chewing, was the only Titan that seemed unfazed by the announcement. The red haired alien simply gave a slow, profound nod as though this was old information.

Garfield regained the ability to breath and used his newly returned power of speech to splutter unintelligibly about how they "Didn't mean to keep secrets" and "Were waiting for the right time" only to be cut off being Robin raising a single hand.

"How long?" He asked, weaving his yellow gloved fingers together.

"A week, or about a week." Garfield said quickly, turning to Raven, who nodded. "Yeah, a week."

"We've established," Cyborg drawled. "That it's been a week."

"How serious is it?" Robin questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Enough that I'm telling the team about it." Raven dead-panned, meeting everyone's eyes, causing Sarah to blush. "But I don't want the media knowing, I've got enough to handle without cameras and journalists involved."

"Calm down Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. They won't hear it from us." Cyborg snorted sarcastically, receiving a confused, but grateful smile from the sorceress. "What you and the grass-stain get up to is your own business."

Robin sighed tiredly. "You know I have to ask this Raven. Can your powers handle it?"

Raven opened her mouth to reply, but closed it slowly, frowning down at the table before looking her leader in the eye. "I'm trying."

Starfire grasped Robin's wrist, turning the boy wonder's attention to her. "Raven knows what is best for her and her well being. I think we should trust her in this, as we would trust her in anything else."

Robin hesitated, but nodded at the wisdom of her words. "Right, yeah."

"Can we eat **now**?" Cyborg whined, his human eye winking at Raven as the others consented and returned to their meal.

All but Garfield, his lips moving silently, all emotion ceasing to reach Raven's empathy.

As he had done once before, Beast Boy was blocking her out.


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: Hey guys, long time no see. I'm still alive and hopefully I'll be able to post a little more frequently now. I'm not going make promises, I'll just let the continued updates speak for me. Thanks for your loyalty and patience.

* * *

The gym was alive with the music of repeated thuds and grunts, Beast Boy sought to release his pent up energy into the punching bag reserved for himself and Robin.

While Starfire and Cyborg could pass as human on the street if they wished, here in the exercise room their true natures made it difficult to accommodate such strength. Their punching bags were kevlar sacks filled with concrete dust, their weights little more than lead blocks on either end of solid steel bars. Such was the construction of their equipment that the one time Beast Boy had attempted to use it he had almost broken his arm.

Thus, the gym was divided into four sections, the Brawler Section (For Robin and Beast Boy) the Super Section (For Cyborg and Starfire) the Sparring Mat, and the Human Section (For Raven). The Human Section had an assortment of treadmills, light punching bags and various weight machines that one of the other Titans would have destroyed in the course of their everyday fitness routine. Something about Raven's partition being called "Human" had brought a half-smile to the sorceresses face, the wording reminding her that here, among aliens and shapeshifters, she was almost… Normal.

Garfield shook his head, trying to free himself of such thoughts.

Here in the training room he was supposed to be focused, fired up, a fitness machine. In the days leading up to the Gala he had let his physical training lapse, a fact Robin would be quick to pick up on if he allowed himself to continue the trend.

Fate, as it so happened, hated him.

Raven, the purple haired, pallid girl herself, walked into the gym in her shorts and tank top. Garfield all but growled at this development, slamming his fists into the bag with renewed vigour. Raven frowned at him before floating to her treadmill and beginning to run.

So they continued, the sounds of Raven's feet falling on the belt of the treadmill beating a tattoo in Beast Boy's head. Thud-THUD Thud-THUD Thud-THUD. Soon enough his fists sunk into the bag at the same pace, matching her rhythm, her gait.

The changeling realised what was happening and stepped back with a deep sigh, closing his eyes only to realise that the tattoo of Raven's feet was gone.

"Are you angry at me?" The Sorceress asked, inches from him.

Garfield gasped and spun, his hand clutching the space above his heart. "RAE! Don't do that!" He whined, breathing deeply from the workout and Raven's unexpected proximity. "No, I'm not angry at you. Not really. It's just… Why did you spring that on me at breakfast?"

"I didn't mean for it to surprise you." Raven said with a frown. "You wanted the others to know, so I told them. You don't have to keep secrets now."

Emotion whirled within the green teen, before his eyes lost focus and his lips began moving silently. Again, the taste of his consciousness left Raven, no joy or anger or self doubt. He became blank to her, as though he had ceased to exist.

But she could still see him, hear his laboured breath.

"Stop." She said tiredly. "Just stop Garfield"

There it was, a chink in that wall. For a moment, she caught the scent of his feelings, and just that small inkling was enough to almost bowl her over.

"Gar, you're scaring me." She said weakly, reaching out to grasp his wrist. "Tell me what's going on with you, with us?"

The shapeshifter paused, and then sighed, allowing his concentration to slip and the emotion within to pour out.

Rage and grief, jealousy and warmth, hope and utter, desolate doubt.

"I wanted to keep you to myself." Garfield muttered with self-hatred. "Like a possession, a shiny new toy. I'm so sorry Rae."

Beast Boy crouched down, grabbing fistfuls of his emerald hair. "Robin and Star have each other, and Cy has Sarah, but there's still this THING in me, this sick desire to keep you away from them."

Raven was blindsided. At the table she had assumed he resented her sudden honesty, but instead it was something far harder to deal with. She knelt down beside the distraught young man, careful not to touch him. "Is it your primal side?"

Garfield barked out a harsh laugh. "Sure, I could blame it on that. Penguins are known to cut off their mate's interaction with other males, so are lions and walrus's. No, this isn't like that..."

He took a breath, steadying himself, but the panic had already set in. "I'm scared Rae. Terra was just using me, but it hurt so bad when she left. Everyone leaves me, sooner or later. They get tired of me, or annoyed. I'm nothing, nobody, not worth sticking around for."

"Stop it." Raven said firmly, taking Garfield's face in her hands gently. "Please Gar. I'm here, and I'll be here tomorrow. A thousand tomorrows from now, I'll still be here."

"What if I'm not _the one_?" He murmured. "What if we can't make this work?"

"Then we go back to being friends." Raven said reassuringly, before leaning closer. "But I don't want to go back. I'll **make** it work."

They sat, Raven cradling Garfield's head in her hands, for a while. Before long though, Raven started desiring answers.

"How did you block me out?" She asked shakily. "No one outside the League has done that to me."

"Mento made us all train to keep people from our minds." Beast Boy muttered flatly, taking her hands from his face gently and getting to his feet. "I wasn't that great at it, could only keep a barrier up if I concentrated on saying the alphabet backwards. It was meant to be a last ditch attempt to keep people from attacking our thoughts."

"Do you feel like I'm attacking you?" Raven frowned, looking away from him.

"No!" Beast Boy yelped, as though the idea had stung him. "I just think… Sometimes I need to take a moment, to gather myself."

He offered her a hand and she allowed herself to take it, rising with his help. "Why though? You've never tried to keep me out before."

"I wasn't so close to you before, and I didn't want to scare you now that's changed." He admitted, looking away. "The Doom Patrol said my emotions were erratic and uncontrolled. Inhuman."

Raven scowled, Rage overtaking her for a single, indulgent moment before she exhaled slowly and let it pass. "I'm more scared by the nothingness than any wild emotion you might have." The sorceress smiled. "Inhuman is something I can understand pretty well, wouldn't you say?"

Garfield chuckled slightly, before sighing. "Rob and Starfire make this look so easy, but it isn't is it? How do we make this work… How do we make _us_ work?"

"You're asking me?" Raven said bluntly. "This is the second relationship I've been in Beast Boy, I'm just as lost as you."

"You don't **seem** lost." The changeling muttered, giving the punching bag a half-hearted whack. "Do you know where do we go from here?"

"How about the roof?"

* * *

Sunset left the water of Titan Island sparking in russet hues and golden reflections. Across the water they could see the skyscrapers and bayside buildings glimmer as their windows caught the light of a sinking sun.

"I can see why you like it here." Beast Boy nodded appreciatively, slipping his hand into her own. "It's peaceful."

They drifted over to a corner of the rooftop, where Raven crossed her legs and levitated a few feet off the ground. Beast Boy sat down on the Tower's ledge, undaunted by the vertigo inducing drop behind him. "Now what?"

"You think I'm going to be scared by whatever emotions are rattling around in your head?" Raven asked with a raised brow. "My mother was a cultist who bore the spawn of a demon and then spent the next several years refusing to show me any kind of love in the fear I wouldn't be able to handle something so human."

Garfield recoiled slightly, shaking his head to try and catch up with the turn of events. "But you **are** human Rae."

The sorceress sighed, patting her companion's knee. "That isn't how you do this Gar. I say something, then you match it. Okay?"

The changeling frowned. "Why?"

"Just try it." She suggested wearily.

"Okay..." He rubbed the back of his head "When I was barely old enough to walk I had already been to five different countries. I don't know what language is my first because my parents refused to speak anything but the local dialect. Because we moved so much I never had any lasting friends, and when my folks died I was left with no one."

"The monks of Azarath wouldn't let me play with the other children because they thought I would hurt them instinctively. Azar was the only one who ever smiled at me, and after she died I was left with a mother I barely knew trying to teach me that feeling any kind of emotion was wrong." Raven salvoed, floating slightly closer.

"I spent the first three years after my parent's were gone with an abusive carer who forced me to shift into animals so that I could steal jewellery, then he tried to have me killed so that he would inherit my parent's money." Came Beast Boy's counter, his eyes tightening slightly at the memory.

Raven paused, slightly thrown by the new information before forging on. "When I came to Earth I tried to join the Justice League, but Zatana warned them against me and I spent the next year trying to avoid any of the "Heroes" that had spurned me, because I was afraid they'd lock me away."

The changeling's face went tight with fury, indignant at Raven's treatment. "The first and last gift Mento ever gave me was to hide my deformity."

As he looks down at his gloved right hand, Raven's left settles over it. "I killed more people than I can count, and it still keeps me up at night."

"You didn't-" He began, before Raven kissed him lightly.

"No, I didn't." Raven says with a smile, tugging off his glove and weaving her fingers between his. "And you're not deformed."

The sun had fallen, by the time either of them spoke again. Raven had taken to the ledge with Beast Boy and their legs dangled freely over the side. Raven lent her head on Garfield's shoulder before asking quietly. "What was his name? The man that you lived with after your parent's accident?"

"Gantry." He whispers. "Nicholas Gantry. The Doom Patrol sent him to jail after they stopped the thugs he had hired to kill me."

"And they adopted you after that?" She stated, more than asked. "Mento doesn't seem like the type."

"He wasn't." Beast Boy admitted with a slightly bitter tone. "Rita- Elasti-Girl, talked him into it."

"Was Rita a good carer?"

"I don't know about "Carer", but she was a great mom." Garfield laughed. "If she wasn't who she is, and I wasn't… _me_ , I think I would have had one of those happily ever after deals that you hear about orphans getting in the stories. I missed out on that with the Doom Patrol, but I'm more than happy to try again here."

"Happily ever after?" Raven smiled lightly. "I suppose it could happen."

"Hmmm." Beast Boy hummed, watching the stars begin to appear. "Do you think Robin will just leave well enough alone?"

"No." Raven said flatly. "I think we have some heavy talking downs to look forwards to."

"Spectacular."


	15. Chapter 15

Robin had left them alone that day, seeming to withdraw into himself and go about the daily routine with automated, unfocused movements. Beast Boy was worried they had somehow offended the Boy Wonder but figured there was nothing he could do until Robin himself brought the issue out into the open.

Raven was concerned about him too, but for different reasons.

"He's never this distracted." She had confessed to Garfield as she helped him prepare dinner, "Help" in Raven's case meaning very little contact with the food and a great deal of handing Beast Boy the utensil needed for specific tasks. "Even when he was moonlighting as Red X he wasn't this scattered."

"Maybe we shouldn't have told him about us." Garfield frowns, not noticing Raven's surprise at his use of plurals. "It's obviously caused his brain to short circuit."

"I don't think this is about that, not really." The empath disagreed. "His emotions aren't directed at anyone. He feels the same around Cyborg and Starfire as he does around us. If it was anyone else I'd think he was blocking me or giving off false signals but with Robin that's..."

"Impossible, yeah." Beast Boy nods, knowing their psychic bond was something neither Raven or the Titan's leader liked to speak about. "He'll figure it out, I'm sure."

_

It took him three days to do so.

Beast Boy and Raven tried their best not to impede on his contemplation, even Starfire seemed more suppressed, speaking loudly rather than exclaiming, and Cyborg tried his best not to influence whatever decision Robin was grappling with, despite his strong suspicion it had to do with the youngest Titans and their relationship.

On the third day, when Raven rose from her room into the common area, Robin was already awake and seated at the table. She had known this of course, but seeing him was something else.

His usual morning edition of the Gotham Times was nowhere to be seen, he sat there nursing a coffee and when she arrived he nodded to her as he always did, but his attention did not waver from the sorceress as she prepared her tea.

She sat and for the first time in years, Robin was the one to break their silence.

"Raven." He began, his eyes flicking from her face to his coffee cup as she went to meet his gaze. "Were you and Beast Boy _afraid_ of telling me about your relationship?"

The other chairs at the table shot out and toppled onto the floor as Raven's eyes widened. "I… We were worried, but I wouldn't say **afraid**."

"There was an element of reluctance though?" The Boy Wonder pressed. "Why?"

"Well, at first it was because I wanted privacy, we weren't sure if it was going to last at the beginning and I didn't like the idea of people getting a private drama show." Raven revealed, toying with the edge of her teacup. They were both out of their comfort zones. "After that… We thought you might decide it was too dangerous for the team."

"You thought I'd _forbid_ it?" Robin asks incredulously. "Even though Starfire and I-"

"Starfire won't destroy a building if her emotions get away from her." Raven cut him off, locking eyes with him across the table. "She's not dangerous like I am, or like Beast Boy is."

Behind his domino mask, Robin frowns and sits for a moment in consideration. Energy was high between two of the most laconic Titans, and between their link flowed an understanding that under different circumstances, Robin would indeed criticise romance between a woman who needed balanced emotion, and a man who barely contained his feelings. Raven regarded this as logical, but Robin was aghast at the revelation.

"Are we really so cut off from each other?" Robin asks, a note of unease in his voice.

"We're professional, it's how the team functions." Raven supplemented, her monotone answer seeming to hit the Boy Wonder like a physical blow. He pushed back from the table and stood.

"I'm going to miss breakfast, tell the others to meet me in Room 15 at noon please Raven." He walked to the elevator, passing Raven as she gave a curious nod.

He was gone for ten minutes before Starfire awoke and she tapped the table out of habit, realising too late that she was signalling to an empty room.

_

The other Titans were unnerved by Robin's even stranger behaviour today, eating breakfast in relative silence and going about the morning with questioning glances at one another. A message came through on their communicators at 11am that just raised more questions.

 **[Robin] ROOM 15, 12:00, UNIFORMS PROHIBITED.**

"What does he mean, "Uniforms prohibited"?" Cyborg looked around at the others, who all shrugged.

"I suppose we have to go in civilian clothes." Beast Boy inferred, squinting at the message. "Maybe it's some kind of… espionage test? To see if we can blend with regular people."

"Robin is the only one that can blend with regular people." Raven stated. "At least without holograms or full body make up and contact lenses."

"Okay, good point." Garfield nods.

They all parted, heading first to their rooms to change out of their heroic gear and into casual clothes. Beast Boy came out of his own room in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt opened over a Gorrilaz t-shirt. He was feeling great about this choice, especially when Raven came out of her room wearing black jeans, black boots and a black hoodie. She eyed his outfit for a second, struggling to stay straight faced until he braced an elbow against the wall, put his opposite hand on his hip and leaned towards her with a cheesy "How **you** doin'?"

She lost it, covering her mouth with a hand as she laughed, the empath doubled over and let herself be taken by the fit of glee. Overhead the lights flickered in time with her giggles, but stayed strong in their endless task of illumination.

Garfield waited for her mirth to subside before stepping closer, watching her register how close he was before touching his lips to hers. He let out a chuckle of his own when they came apart and headed for the elevator. "Y'know, I don't think there's a single thing I like to hear more than your laughs."

"That's because they're rare." Raven said with a touch of playfulness. "Like diamonds."

"You know those aren't _actually_ rare." Garfield told her as they stepped into the lift. "The De Beers Corporation artificially inflated their price by withholding massive amounts of them back in the late 80s until people decided they were valuable because of rarity, then the corporation was found out and just increased quality standards for jewellery grade diamonds so that they could still profit off of one of the most common gem varieties. It's all just bullshit designed to make money."

Raven blinked repeatedly. "How do you know all that?"

"Ever heard of Blood Diamonds?" Beast Boy asks, leading them out of the elevator when the doors opened. "I've seen them being mined."

Processing this, the sorceress all but ran into the back of her emerald boyfriend when he stopped stock still in the doorway of Room 15. "Gar! What the hell are you-"

She caught sight of Robin, or more accurately, Dick.

Inside Room 15 was a circle of chairs, each of them an equal space from one another and each of them innocent enough in design. Yet given the sudden revelation, they appeared grave to the contrasting couple.

Dick was dressed in blue jeans, a red hoodie and converse shoes. He looked up at them, and for the first time they met his pale blue eyes.

" _Holy shit_." Garfield whispers.

"Uniform prohibited." Raven murmurs, pushing Beast Boy forwards gently. They took their seats in the circle, Raven on Robin's left and Beast Boy to hers. Starfire came into the room next, her eyes widening at the sight of her boyfriend without his domino mask and a thousand questions springing to her lips. Dick held up a placating hand and gestured to the seat at his right.

"Hold on Kori." He said, a smirk curving the edges of his mouth. "I'll explain everything when Victor gets here."

Beast Boy shifted in his seat. No one called Cy "Victor" among the Titans, even Sarah hesitated to do so.

When the metallic man arrived in his grey tracksuit, he saw the chairs first and let out a guffaw. "What is this, an AA meeting? Hi everyone, my name is Cy… borg..."

His mouth dropped open at Robin's exposed face, something akin to fear came over his expression, before he schooled himself and chuckled easily, trying to bring levity to the room. "Jeez Rob, I should have worn my tuxedo for this."

"That wasn't the tone I was going for." Dick smiled back at him as the bigger Titan took his seat between Garfield and Koriand'r. "And please, call me Dick, or Richard."

"Richard it is." Victor said, nodding. "What this all about man?"

"It's about us." Their leader said with a gesture at his friends. "I realised the other day that we can't keep going like we were, with people afraid to tell each other secrets, with all this doubt between us. I've already done the whole stoic, controlling leader deal, I don't want that to be how we remember this, ten, twenty years from now. Someone told me recently that we're a team who acts professionally with each other, but I don't want that, I walked away from that. We're more than just a _team_."

Raven fiddles with the hem of her left sleeve, unsure if this meeting was somehow a punishment for what she had said that morning.

"Of course we're more than a team Dick." Garfield said, doing an admirable job of not laughing at the Boy Wonder's name. "We're friends."

"No." Dick shook his head. "We aren't."

Raven's anxiety spiked as Kori's eyes turned on the Boy Wonder, flaring a violent green. A nearby filing cabinet was encompassed by black energy and exploded, the light overhead burned brighter than a small sun before shattering into a thousand pieces and a crack broke open along the wall behind Dick, who remained unfazed.

Beast Boy lurched towards Raven and pulled the empath into a soothing embrace, his eyes flashing angrily at Dick before he spoke in a deadly calm voice. " **Explain**."

" _Yes_." Koriand'r said in a clipped tone. " _Do quickly the explaining_."

"We're more than friends." Dick said, his voice calm and his eyes sincere. "I'm not great at- at articulating my feelings, but I've tried to think of any other word for the five of us and come up short. I'm sorry about the stress Raven, but I wanted to prove something."

"What?" Raven asks quietly, patting Garfield's shoulder so that he knew she was fine. "Prove what?"

"We're intertwined, every one of us." Dick says, meshing his fingers together. "What you felt right now is how I feel about the Titans, I can't lose any of you. I wouldn't keep you and Garfield apart, or Victor and Sarah, or Kori and I. I wouldn't keep you from Victor's garage out of fear that your emotions would break his equipment, or Garfield from Kori's room in case Silkie reacts badly to his scent… No **family** should be kept from one another, and that's what we are. I've lost my birth family, like Garfield. I almost burned my bridges with my adoptive family. I will not lose this one, not because I was afraid to reveal my secrets, and not because people were afraid of revealing their own."

The others stayed silent, waiting for whatever was swirling underneath that tousled black hair to reveal itself.

"My name is Richard John Grayson." Says Robin, evoking a gasp from several of the Titans. "I was raised in a circus as part of a flying trapeze act with the rest of my family "The Flying Graysons" until a fire claimed their lives. I was taken in by Bruce Wayne and shortly after became Batman's partner in justice, Robin."

Several heartbeats passed before he looked up, the others seemed frozen for the longest moment, until Beast Boy shook it off and smiled at him. "So you've always had a thing for tights?"

Cyborg snorted, then laughed when he caught sight Dick's involuntary smile. Starfire joined in from sheer relief, glad that the severity had passed and emotions lightened.

"If we're going to be open with each other, we should do it completely and in the right setting." Dick says lightly, wanting to keep things from becoming dark again. "So if you all agree, we'll start having these meetings every fortnight or so, like group therapy, were we can reveal as much or as little as we need. We have to trust each other."

"Is that why you're not calling us by our hero names?" Garfield questioned.

"Yeah. Outside this room we can keep the masks on, but in here that only builds boundaries." Dick explained.

Raven smiled lightly. "What about me? I don't wear masks or use a different name."

"What name do you _want_ to use?" Garfield asked, a fang peaking over his lip as he gave her a crooked smile. "If no one knew who you were, and you could pick something else, what would you be called?"

Raven considered, her amethyst eyes staying on Garfield's instead of going down. Who would she choose to be?

"I've always liked… Rachel." She confessed.

"Then that's what we'll call you." Dick said simply.

_

After three hours of them talking, about regular everyday things, in regular everyday clothes, and with regular everyday names (Though Garfield still chuckled under his breath at Robin's real name) Kori's stomach growled menacingly, signalling that it was time to end that meeting.

They filed out of the room and into the elevator, Dick exited at his and Kori's floor, uncomfortable with being unmasked for so long, he was itching to be Robin again.

The others stayed in their regular clothes, cooking up snack foods and piling on to the couch to watch a few episodes of The Office. A few episodes became many, which became almost an entire season. By the end of it the sun had long sunk from the sky and things were muted in their small part of the world.

Beast Boy rose from the couch with a stretch and gave a slight sigh. "Well, not to love you and leave you, but I've got a hot shower and a documentary on moray eels that I've been _dying_ to watch. Peace out hombres."

He vaulted over the couch and made his way into the elevator, all without realising that Raven had risen after him and floated into the lift as well. He flinched massively when he caught sight of her, before letting out a gasp and clutching at his chest. " **Again?!** Rae, you're cute and all, but I'm going to have a heart attack at this rate."

Raven rolled her eyes at his drama and reached a hand out to request their floor. "I need a shower too."

"Oh, fair enough." Garfield nodded. "How do you wanna do this? You first and then I'll grab mine, or do you want to meditate a bit while I have one?"

"I'll meditate." Raven says, smiling at his thoughtfulness. "I haven't gotten the chance today."

Their floor arrived and the two went separate ways, Garfield to grab his towel and Raven to embrace the quiet of her room.

Beast Boy tried to bathe as quickly as he could, forgoing his 5 minute hair conditioner and shaving routine. However he couldn't bring himself to skip brushing his teeth, and it was as he scrubbed his fangs that Raven came into the tiled room with her towel and bed clothes over her arm. Beast Boy spat into the sink and looked over at her apologetically. "Sorry for taking so long, I tried to hurry up but there's only so much-"

" _Garfield_." Raven said, holding his face gently between her hands. "It's fine. Take as long as you want, I don't mind."

She left him to his brushing and set her clothes and towel down neatly on her washing hamper, before lifting her jumper over head and throwing it in. Garfield caught a glimpse of her bare back in the mirror and nearly choked on his toothpaste. "What are you doing?"

"Taking a shower." Raven said, shimmying out of her jeans as Beast Boy averted his eyes in an attempt to give her privacy. The glass door of the shower opened and closed before he turned back to the mirror and started brushing his gums. Raven's voice came from behind the smokey glass of the shower door. "Can I watch that documentary?"

"Huh?" Beast Boy squeaked, caught by surprise again. "What?"

"The one about eels." Raven clarified, even though her form was blurred through the glass, Garfield still blushed fiercely at the glimpses he caught from the corner of his eye.

"Oh, sure." He said, his voice strained. "Just ah… Just come on by when you want."

He spat into the sink and rinsed, scrambling to get out quickly, tossing a "See ya then!" behind him as he rushed to leave.

Under the steaming hot water of her shower, Raven smirked proudly. On Azarath the acolytes bathed in communal spaces, thinking nothing of their nudity, Raven too considered bare skin no more of a taboo than being bare faced. Being able to turn the tables on her boyfriend and frazzle the green Titan had felt oddly satisfying, giving him a taste of how she felt.

Garfield for his part, had to open his door with shaking hands and brace himself against the raised base of his bed, running a hand though his hair the changeling laughed a little at himself. "Come **on** man, pull it together."

He went about preparing his room, loading the documentary up on his TV and arranging his blankets into a small nest that the shapeshifter expanded as an afterthought. He made an effort at cleaning some of the clutter from the corners, but this just seemed to make the problem worse, so he abandoned that line of thought quickly. After a small eternity, Raven's footsteps came down the hall to his door and Garfield opened it as she had raised her hand to knock.

"Fancy meeting you here." He said nonchalantly, hoping to move past the fact that he may or may not have seen her naked only minutes before. "One ticket for "Creatures of the Deep – Moray Eels" narrated by Morgan Freeman?"

Raven's eyebrow twitched upwards as she came into the room, her blue camisole and pyjama shorts matching the room quite by accident, yet she looked natural within Beast Boy's sanctum and he couldn't help but appreciate that. She levitated up on to his bed and settled into the nest he had made with only a small amount of amusement. "This is what you had to prepare?"

"Hey, it takes a lot to get _just_ _right_." Garfield complained, leaping up onto the bed with feline grace, managing to avoid making the mattress shift as he took his place beside the empath and wrapped them both in blankets, hitting the play button on his remote and getting comfortable. "I didn't think you were interested in eels."

"I'm not, really." Raven admitted, shifting closer and smiling smugly when Garfield put his arm around her in response. "I haven't slept great for three nights and the only thing that I can think of that helps is you."

"I'm like codeine and bourbon." Beast Boy agreed, before frowning. "Don't actually drink those together, Cyborg and I watched a late night infomercial about it that scared the green off my ass."

"Noted." The sorceress assured him.

"So you're here purely for my company?" The changeling asked after the documentary's introduction was over. "I think I can live with that."

"Can you now?" Raven asked drily. "I'm not too much of a burden?"

" **Never** that." Beast Boy said gravely, gripping her chin gently and tilted her head towards him. "Want me to prove it?"

"I could think of worse ways to pass the time." She teases, weaving her fingers into his hair and pulling him down to her.

At first it was gentle, a chaste kiss between lovers, then she bit down on his lip gently and something shifted between them. Garfield pushed her down and the hand she had in his hair balled into a fist as her tongue flicked across his lower lip. Raven gasped when the changeling's hand ran down her leg and hiked it up over his hip, his lips trailed down across her jaw and travelled down. The sorceress's hands both found their way to Garfield's back and when she felt his teeth against her neck and his claws raking gently over her hips, those nails dug into him.

His alarm clock squealed, jolting them apart just before the black energy surrounding it obliterated the device, shards of plastic and wiring littering the room. From the TV still came the dulcet tones of Morgan Freeman's voice as he described life for a Moray Eel in Australia's great barrier reef.

Beast Boy breathed deeply for a moment, before chuckling and helping Raven sit back up with him against the wall. They replaced the blankets from where the two had thrown them in the melee.

"Sorry." He grinned at her. "Primal urges got the better of me."

"I don't recall being innocent in that exchange." She said, somewhat out of breath. "Maybe we should leave next time for my room though, where I can't kill your expensive flat screen by accident."

"Next time huh?" He looks sideways at her.

"You're missing the part about them making tunnels in coral." Raven told him, smiling as his attention jerked back to the TV. She yawned and nuzzled into his side, enjoying the warmth of another person, and of his steady emotions. Garfield reached to his side and flicked off his bedroom light, wincing slightly at the vibrancy of the TV until he adjusted the picture setting and sound with his remote.

Raven faded into sleep, the weight of her against his side soothed the animals within, his restless energy forgotten for to move was to wake her, which was unthinkable.

Morgan Freeman's voice crooned on, Raven dreamed of grass colored eels.


End file.
